Tenderizing chuck roast

Costco had these huge, lovely looking chuck roasts for braising. I bought one and the resulting pot roast was the worst I've ever made. Huh?

One day shortly thereafter, I was perusing CI online and saw an article about choosing cuts for making pot roast. Aha!~ The cut I bought was a chuck shoulder roast, something CI says is the lowest rated by testers, being exceedingly chewy, with less beefy flavor. Boy, was this roast chewy. It was falling apart, but the chew factor was unbelievable. After it was "done" the first time, I actually put it back in the oven for another couple hours. It didn't help.

Alas, I only cooked half of it a couple of months ago. The other half is now defrosting in my refrigerator. So, what the heck can I do to make it less chewy and more tender? This truly is one of those items that makes it easy to get your 30 chews before you swallow!

My first thought was maybe to make a sauerbraten or similar - braise with vinegar to break the meat down into something more tender. A friend suggested brining.

Anyone with a similar experience? Or any knowledge of what can reduce the chewiness of this cut?

I wouldn't brine beef. Using a vinegar-based braise will obviously affect the taste, but it won't appreciably affect the tenderness of the dish.

Are you sure about the Cooks Illustrated view? Shoulder roast is actually the classic cut of meat for braising and I'd be surprised if they didn't like it. My quick search revealed a June, 2004 note on cooksillustrated.com that says "Chuck Roast: Tender, beefy, rich flavor. The chuck-eye roast is our favorite, but any boneless chuck roast will work. If the butcher has not tied the roast, do this yourself." They go on to say the round roast, which is from the leg, was too chewy. Perhaps you are thinking of that? Also, their March 2002 pot roast recipe calls for chuck (i.e. shoulder) roast.

In any case, it is difficult to be really helpful without knowing exactly what you did the first time. In general, the key to having very tender meat in a braise is to heat the meat slowly, and then cook it at a low temperature until done. Cooks Illustrated recipes tend to be reliable, so I'd start with one of theirs.

Here's the basic idea. PM me and I'd be happy to mail you a more detailed recipe.

1. Brown the meat on the stove in a hot cast iron pan or in your braising pan. Just a few minutes on each side, so it is nicely carmelized. If you'd like, put the meat aside and brown any vegetables you'll use. Classic veggies are onions, carrots, and celery, but there are endless other options.

2. Add the meat, cooking liquid (stock, water, wine, etc.), spices, and any other vegetables, to your braising pan. The liquid should barely cover the meat. Remember, you don't want to stew or boil the meat, and the meat will release liquid as it cooks. So don't start with too much.

3. Cover (or leave the cover slightly ajar...views differ on this). Put in the oven at 250 degrees. Check after 3 hours, but the final dish may take more time. It is done when the meat can be easily pulled apart with a fork. Check the dish every hour or so and turn over if it isn't covered in liquid. The ultimate cooking time depends on the size and shape of the meat, among other things, but it will probably be around 3-4 hours.

4. When done, let the meat cool in the braising liquid. It will reabsorb some juices after it cools.

Most recipes say that you should preheat the oven to 250 (or some other temperature) before adding the meat. I've been experimenting recently with the above method, i.e. not preheating the oven. The result is that the dish heats more slowly, resulting in a more tender final product. This method is suggested by Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking, for those who want to read more. McGee also suggests leaving the lid open a little bit during the braise, which helps keep the liquid temperature close to 212 degrees and regulates the air temperature (much like adding a pan of water to a smoker).

HI,

I bought almost ten pounds of this same meat at Costco last week. I seared every edge, removed the meat from the pot, then cooked two pounds of onions and chopped garlic until translucent. I returned the meat adding water to almost covered, maybe half dozen dried shiitake mushrooms and sealed my pressure canner. Once it gave off steam for 7-10 minutes, then I added a 10 pound weight to pressure cook for an hour. It was tender, not chewy and very flavorful.

I actually documented it this last week. I may just add the pictures sometime later to this post.

Maybe ten years ago was first time I encountered one of those hunks from Costco. I started to cook it at noon to assure it was tender.

From my wee experience smoking pulled pork, I've learned that when the meat seems tender and reached internal temperature that it may still need more time. The connective tissues may need time to loosen their grip to render fully tender meat.

Regards,

Hi,

I just ran over to Epicurious.com, I made the following recipe last year for a dinner party using the Costco beef. It was cooked the night before, I let it cool in its juices. The next day I skimmed off the fat, thickly sliced the pot roast and let it gently rewarm in its juices. It was very well received.

Braised beef and onions

In the recipe preamble they comment, "Ruth has substituted allspice for the more difficult-to-find quatre épices, which Mary used to flavor the meat." I found in the epicurious index the proportions for the quatre épices and made my own via the coffee grinder.

You could cook this tonight at your leisure, then have a wonderful dinner tomorrow.

Regards,

Here's my default method for big pieces of tough meat. I use a heavy dutch oven with a very tight lid. All of the cooking is done in this single pot on the stovetop.

Salt the meat - Lots of it
Sear the meat
Deglaze fond with flavorful liquid*
Return meat to the dutch oven
Add enough flavorful liquid to cover the meat
Do not bring to a boil
Determine the stovetop setting that will keep the liquid temp stabilized at 180F when covered
Leave overnight, covered (~8 hours)
Cool at room temperature without the cover
Cover and refrigerate ~ 12 hours
Remove the solidified disk of fat from the top
Reheat slowly at the same stovetop setting the meat was cooked in

*Any thick or thin liquids would work.. soy-dashi, chile-tomatoes, beer-beef stock, etc.

For smaller cuts of meat (e.g., short ribs), I either cook overnight at 160F or cook at 180F for a few hours.

While I admit, Bossy's got flavor no matter what the cut, I made a pot roast of "arm roast" which started out incredibly tough and turned into a lovely stew here. I do recommend the use of wine, tomatoes or some slightly acidic ingredient in a stew, and long cooking at very low temp - I used to use the Crock-Pot for stews and pot roasts until I got my Dutch Oven.

The bad result was for a typcial slow and low pot roast method (Darren72, this is basically the same as what I've done) that I've never failed with before (for about 30 years). It was seared nicely, had lovely fond, was cooked at a low temp, had enough liquid but not too much, didn't boil, etc.

I realize that ya'll can't know if I know a pot roast from a strip steak, lol, but I truly do. So, it was not the method - the very same that most of you use and have articulated.

I've only had TWO roasts that turned out this way in my cooking life....both of them from Costco. The first one I thought was my fault because I used a different method than I normally do (was playing with my new pressure cooker and read that it would work). So, I chalked it up to the method. It was fall apart fork-tender, yet you thought you had cud in your mouth - it just wouldn't break apart when you chewed, so you had to keep jawing on it!

The next time, I went back to the traditional low and slow, lots of moisture, seared first, etc. It didn't make a whit of difference - and looked exactly the same - fork-tender, yet chewwwwy. It was really fascinating to able to break it apart so easily with a fork yet be so chewy in your mouth that I thought I was again 8 years old and at my grandmother's for a horrible meal of well-done chuck steak (blech).

I looked at the CI article before I posted; I could have mistyped...so I'll go look again.

Here it is, so not sure what you looked at Darren72 - I imagine that they do say different things in different places: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/ ... Roasts.pdf It was in An Illustrated Guide To Beef Roasts - and yes, it is the Chuck Shoulder Roast that they list as one of the worst to use, also called a chuck pot roast or chuck shoulder pot roast. They specifically say that testers found it chewy. And chewy this is.

So, final analysis, I'm really hoping for something that will help resolve CHEWY! I am not going to do this a third time and get the same results if I can avoid it.

I, like MHays, was thinking that wine, wine vinegar, tomatoes, or something acidic might help with it, hence the sauerbraten idea. Marinading it for 3-5 days in wine vinegar/red wine mix seems like it might help break down the fibers and make it less chewy.

Darren22, you said that something acidic wouldn't affect the texture (yes, I am aware that it will change the taste)...that may be true, so help me understand why not....?

I should mention that when I tried the Hausenfeffer recipe I found on grocery-store frankenrabbit, marinating in vinegar didn't do a darn thing; it stayed tough but tasted unpleasantly of vinegar. I do think a little bit of acid helps to break down connective tissue - but if it's the meat fibers, I dunno...you might be right about the cut. I have found that a lot of grocery-store beef has tasted like not much at all, lately, though. Makes me glad I have Bossy...

Another thought: is it possible to serve this cut in such a way that you're serving it cut across the fibers, like you would for skirt steak? Or maybe this is a cut to think about cubing and adding to chili?

ViewsAskew wrote:Darren22, you said that something acidic wouldn't affect the texture (yes, I am aware that it will change the taste)...that may be true, so help me understand why not....?

I said using an acidic marinade won't make the meat more tender. Acid in a sauce will lead us to produce more saliva, which does help breakdown meat. But letting meat sit in a marinade for three days will tend to make the meat mushy, but necessarily more tender.

Here is a link to a good NY Times article about this.

Alton Brown's Good Eats episode called "Raising the Steaks" also discusses this. Transcript here.

Thanks for the link to the Cooks Illustrated article. I see exactly what you mean. I didn't realize that "Chuck should roast" was any different that the first two types of chuck listed in the article.

My advice: if you have a recipe that has worked well in the past, use it. Cut the meat thinly and against the grain (as suggested by Mhays) if it seems chewy. If it's chewy, don't buy this type of chuck should roast again.

Darren72 wrote:My advice: if you have a recipe that has worked well in the past, use it. Cut the meat thinly and against the grain (as suggested by Mhays) if it seems chewy. If it's chewy, don't buy this type of chuck should roast again.

Yeah, I won't ever buy it again...I just want to salvage the 4 pounds that is left it if at all possible. Since I've already used a recipe that always has worked well in the past, I'm just not going to try that again, lol...isn't that the definition of insanity?

Mhays, I did think of trying it as stew meat, but your post about chili sparked an idea that maybe I should go even farther - grind it! I could either do a coarse chili meat or maybe add some fat and make hamburger....hmmm (it's pretty well trimmed, so I think it would be too lean for a good hamburger). I need to borrow MIL's meat grinder anyway to make some breakfast sausage.

Thanks for the links and ideas, all.

Honestly, I've never had problem with chuck roast, and it's one of the cuts I normally use for stew. I prefer to use short ribs where I can, but when I can't I have no problem with chuck. It's not nearly as flavorful as short ribs, but it's not chewy except in the grisly parts that you find. You can always trim out the gristle if you so desire. Personally, it doesn't bug me. I don't do anything special with it. It just takes about 3-4 hours of low simmering in liquid to do the trick. If you taste it at the 2 hour mark, it'll still be tough and chewy. At the three or four hour mark, it starts to completely break down and become soft.

You could make stock with your roast. Cook's Illustrated's recipe for rich beef stock calls for 4 lbs. beef chuck and 2 lbs. small beef marrow bones.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe the liquid you added to it was too cold. I always try to make sure the liquid is the same temp (appoximately) as the meat I am adding it to, this way the meat doesn't seize up.

I agree that the best thing might be to make a stew out of it. When I make mine, I coat the pieces in flour & then brown in oil/butter just til its light brown, so the meat is still almost raw, then add to the stewpot & cover with warm liquid, adding wine at room temp after the liquid (stock) and the meat have been married.

I have recently -found myself referencing a couple of stellar recipes that I gleaned from the old Frugal Gourmet Cookbooks of the late 80s and early 90s when I was first learning to slow cook.

One of my favorites to this day was the good Rev. Smith's melt in your mouth yankee pot roast. I'm certain that this roast tenderized the way that it did due to the copious amount of salt pork that sat atop it during it's slow braise. The sale pork also adds a cerain fatty richness to the braing liquid which makes for outstanding gravy.

The recipe can be found below:

http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/twarda/rec ... Roast.html

How about taking the chuck to your butcher and having it ground?

Binko - I think even if I stew it I'll have the same problems - it is tender...just waaaaay to chewy.

imscott - another great idea - stock! I usually only make chicken stock as we don't use beef stock nearly as often. But, to have some good stock in my freezer....

Liz - definitely wasn't the technique or cold water (it wasn't cold, BTW) - it's the cut of meat. Truly. Hard to describe and since it's only happened to me twice in over 30 years of making stew and pot roast, I wouldn't have understood it until it happened - it's just weird.

YourPalWill - I thought that this might help! Just not sure that I want to chance it. Again, the last time this happened, I put it BACK in the stock pot and cooked it again, in the remaining grease, for another two hours - just to see what would happen. Now it was completely falling apart, but still exactly as chewy. Bizarre.

Kennyz - my MIL has a grinder that I need to borrow next week. That was my thought earlier. Now I'm torn between grinding and making stock...

ViewsAskew wrote:Binko - I think even if I stew it I'll have the same problems - it is tender...just waaaaay to chewy.

Hmm...I don't know then. Like I said, I've never had a problem with chuck being chewy. Perhaps it's just your particular cut/quality of chuck. I use the cut quite often and I've never done anything special to tenderize it.

edit: Looking at pictures of chuck shoulder, you're right, it must be the cut itself. The chuck I use, while labeled chuck pot roast or whatever, is much fattier than the pictures I see of chuck shoulder. I'd make a stock out of it.

Binko, I didn't even realize there were that many roasts that could be named "chuck" and be different. A chuck roast is a chuck roast, right? Not!

And, you had the key...if I showed you a picture of this meat, you'd see very little fat and marbling. That should have been my notice...duh! I'd not choose a steak with that little fat and marbling, but I did, so stock or hamburger it is.

Funny, though, even without a huge amount of fat and marbling, there was a lot of fat in this juices and the meat did get fork tender. It just doesn't lose its chewiness. Well, live and learn...and hopefully my experience will help everyone else remember to either look more carefully or ask more questions about what cut it REALLY is so they don't get the same result.

The thing about tenderizing marinades is that they only penetrate about 1/4-inch into the meat. So for a marinade to be effective, you'd need to cut the meat up.

Here are some recipes that might work, although given what you say about the leanness of the beef, you might think about adding additional fat.

Boeuf a la mode

Provencal beef stew

Slow-cooker shredded beef

Thanks to all...

I made stock. And lovely stock it was.

The other day we we are the fabric store on Elston and made an obligatory stop at Strack and Van Tils....$80 and one 7-bone Certified Angus pot roast later, I now have one of the three cuts that CI tasters said were worthy of pot roast.

I will make it the exact same way and see what happens. I am relatively assured of the results, however, as I've made it multiple times in the past and it's always be just fine. No, it's been excellent, that's right, excellent. [said with conviction as I need some confidence that I'm not losing my cooking abilities, lol, and that is was indeed that beastie roast's fault]

Darren72 wrote:I said using an acidic marinade won't make the meat more tender. Acid in a sauce will lead us to produce more saliva, which does help breakdown meat. But letting meat sit in a marinade for three days will tend to make the meat mushy, but necessarily more tender.

Any given marinade can have a particular acidity. The more acidic the marinade, the more voraciously it will denature the meat proteins. Acid may encourage salivary production, but you see more significant results from particular enzymes.

Scientists have actually shown that a:

"...crude ginger rhizome extract at 0.5 to 1.0% levels in the marination of marginally acceptable lean beef improved meat tenderness by 20-30% in the absence of 2% salt and by 35-35% in the presence of 2% salt."

In other words, juice from the ginger root will tenderize lean beef. This is precisely why Teriyaki exists (aside from its good taste). It is a salt, ginger/pineapple, acid solution used to marinate meat. Ginger and pineapple both have enzymes in their fresh juice similar to human digestive enzymes which encourage protein denaturing, similar to the action of acids on meat proteins.

I will not argue that a highly acidic solution that also has papains or proteolytic enzymes will make the exterior surface of thick cuts of meat mushy over a number of days, because I've seen it happen. However, it is not accurate to suggest that acidic marinades don't alter meat texture... that is precisely what they do through protein denaturaturation which generally has a tenderizing effect when done at an appropriate concentration and duration.

Brining (high salt-concentration soaking) has an entirely different effect on meat, since it deals with osmotic action/osmotic pressure variations to carry flavor within a cut of meat.

Deciding when to use an acid, enzymes, low-salt, or a salt-brine is critical to achieving desired results, since the concentrations, meat thickness/type will all play a part in determining a suitable time in whatever solution you've chosen.

masterchef123 wrote:However, it is not accurate to suggest that acidic marinades don't alter meat texture

Which part of "But letting meat sit in a marinade for three days will tend to make the meat mushy,..." wasn't clear?

Darren72 wrote:

masterchef123 wrote:However, it is not accurate to suggest that acidic marinades don't alter meat texture

Which part of "But letting meat sit in a marinade for three days will tend to make the meat mushy,..." wasn't clear?

This:

Darren72 wrote:"I said using an acidic marinade won't make the meat more tender. Acid in a sauce will lead us to produce more saliva, which does help breakdown meat."

Yes, it will. It just has to be done correctly.

An acidic marinade breaks down meat proteins far before it reaches the saliva in our mouths. Acidic food may encourage salivary glands to produce more saliva, but its principle effect is on the meat proteins.

Thank you for this thread. I didn't know searing was so important! I made a fork tender pot roast this weekend. Delishous!