ABSTRACT
The principal reason for cooking meat is to improve its palatability-aroma, flavor, and possibly tenderness. The two fundamental methods for cooking meat are: dry heat--surrounding the meat with dry, hot air in an oven, under a broiler, on an electric or gas grill and moist heat-surrounding the meat with either steam or hot liquid in a closed vessel. The two moist-heat cooking methods for meat are used when the meat is from a low-quality carcass or is from the parts of a carcass that are not naturally tender. Most meat thermometers are marked with both temperatures and word descriptions of doneness. The key to successful meat cookery is to select the correct cooking method for the many available meat cuts. Beef presents the most problems because of the wide age range of slaughtered cattle; the older animals are less tender.
