Quick Guide To Cooking With Meats

CEBU, Philippines - Broil. Refers to any method of cooking that exposes the meat to a very hot heat source which cooks by radiation. Thus, barbecuing over charcoal is a form of broiling; however, to distinguish the two, it is best heating flame or element above the meat. Broiling cooks quite fast and will often make some parts of the exposed meat burn slightly (good, like the grill-marks on steak), or a lot (bad).

Barbecue or Char-broil; Spit-roasting or rotisserie-roasting. Cooking over charcoal. The charcoal must be ignited and allowed to flame, then disturbed so that the flame dies while the embers keep burning. Sometimes wood chips are added to provide a smokier or more distinctive flavour (often mesquite or hickory wood). Barbecuing adds smoke flavor to meat, and the heat “chars” (burns) marbled fats (good, also imparts flavor), but also dries out the meat more than other methods (bad); it is not suitable for lean cuts of meat except as a last-minute flavour enhancer after another cooking method was first used. Pork loin, for example, is quite unsuitable for barbecuing, but beef flank (for fajitas) can be barbecued after it was first cooked in a pan or oven. Filet mignon, on the other hand, lacks marbling, and can never be successfully barbecued; it must be pan-seared. Large cuts of meat can be barbecued if they are on a spit or rotisserie (something that turns them over continuously on a horizontal axis, so that dripping oils exuded by the meat are not immediately lost, but keep rolling on the meat as it turns).

Fish and shellfish are generally not ideal for barbecuing, but oilier fish like salmon or marlin can be barbecued, especially if protected from direct heat by aluminum foil, banana leaf, etc. In all cases, seafood is very sensitive to overcooking, and missing the mark by 30-60 seconds will already result in some toughness, while overcooking by 2 minutes will result in a rubbery, hard-to-chew texture.

A variation of spit-roasting is the shawarma (an Arabic word, whose Turkish equivalent is doner kebab, while the Greek term is gyro), where the spit is upright rather than sideways. This arrangement makes it convenient to cut off thin slices of cooked meat and catch them on the base. Compared with horizontal spit-roasting (like lechon), a vertical spit is more prone to dry out the meat, because fat drips right off. To compensate, the meat should be wider at the top (looking like an inverted traffic cone), and at the very top above the meat, there should be a layer of pure fat and maybe vegetables, which can slowly drip into the meat layers below.

Steam. Steam, if you recall your science, is water that got so hot that it turned into a gas; thus, steam is considerably hotter than boiling water, and because it is less dense it penetrates the meat fibers better than boiling water. The result is very fast cooking, with minimal loss of juices from the meat, provided you do not overcook. The downside is that there is no caramelization, so the flavours are not complex. As a primary cooking process, steaming is best for vegetables and in some cases seafood or chicken which will be heavily sauced after. It can also be used as one stage in a 2- or 3-part cooking process.

Seared. This usually refers to meat browning quickly by subjecting the item to very high heat allowing it to caramelize which creates more colour and flavour.

Twice-Cooked. Thrice-Cooked. To develop even more complexity and flavour, some recipes call for food to be cooked first by one method, then another, and maybe a third. A common example is adobo, where the meat is both stewed and fried; another is crispy pata, where the meat is stewed  or steamed, then deep-fried.