Carne Asada

Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes

• It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
• The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
• Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
• The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
• The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.

Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.

Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes

• Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
• The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
• It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
• The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
• Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.

Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.