Hints and tips on tenderising meat before cooking

For older meat or less tender cuts there are ways to help make it more tender: Acidic marinades such as lemon juice, wine or wine vinegar help to tenderise meat. The meat may be soaked in the marinade for several hours or days in the chiller. The use of a tenderising marinade is more effective on thinner cuts of meat.
Raw fruits such as kiwifruit, pineapple and paw paw contain proteins which act on raw meat to tenderize it. Simply mash raw fruit and spread over the meat, or mixed with other marinade ingredients to coat the meat, some time before cooking.

Just remember the tenderising effect only acts only on the surface, so a marinade works better on small, thin cuts of meat. Just a note of caution, don't leave the marinade too long otherwise the surface can become 'mushy'.

Other ways to make meat slightly more tender is by mincing or chopping the meat before making into using in recipes such as burgers, lasagne. And batting out meat with a mallet can be used for individual portioned cuts, steaks or schnitzels, but not whole joints.

Now you have learnt how to tenderize your meat have a go at one of our game recipes.