Beef Stew, BBQ Pork, Slow Cooking
Yup, early in my career and doing my own
cooking, I wanted some beef stew.

Then for some decades, over and over, I
followed supposedly some of the best
recipes from supposedly some of the best
qualified cooks, followed the recipes very
carefully down to the last tiny detail,
and all I got were disasters. I wasted a
lot of groceries, time, effort, and money.
I grew to have contempt for anything in a
cookbook, to hate cookbooks.

The beef, and at times some red wine, were
expensive, and all I got was stuff to
flush -- literally.

Finally I learned what apparently is the
secret: Buy a good thermometer. Set up
the cooking effort so that can measure and
control the temperatures of the cooking
and the food accurately.

Then, for food safety, cook the food to at
least 165 F.

For the common recommendation to simmer
beef stew, absolutely don't do that, don't
even be tempted to do that. Ignore,
banish the advice to "simmer".

What a simmer actually is, that is, its
temperature, is rarely defined -- from
lots of cookbooks, some famous, I never
saw a definition. The usual definitions,
descriptions of "simmer", sound like 212
F, and my experience is that that is TOO
DARNED HOT and soon will ruin any meat.

Why 175 F? I still don't have the best
information, but the hints I did get are
that over 175 F meat proteins shrink,
"unwind", expel their liquids, and become
dry and brittle much like charcoal.

The Secret: Be sure the temperature of
the food, carefully measured and
controlled, is over 165 F and never over
175 F.

So, I took that secret to BBQ of "picnic"
pork shoulder. Unwrap, place on a V-wire
rack, place in a roasting pan, don't cover
the pan, place in an oven at 190 F, cook,
maybe 22 hours, to a carefully measured
internal temperature of the pork of 170 F.

Result: Soft, moist, juicy, succulent
roast pork. If wish can easily separate
the meat fibers and have pulled pork (an
East Tennessee approach); instead I prefer
coarsely to chop (a West Tennessee
approach). To eat, add favorite BBQ
sauce, warm in microwave, maybe top with
coleslaw, and place between buns, bread,
or toasted sliced bread. It's terrific.

I always thought that beef stew was a
cooking technique for tough cuts of beef.

For beef stew, I called a beef industry
trade group. Their recommendation was
somewhat common: For the beef, use USDA
Choice Chuck Roast; gee, that's quite
tender -- are not really making stew.

Some of the sources, on food chemistry,
etc. I consulted claimed that beef is
tough only because of the collagen and
that the muscle fibers are always tender.
The slow cooking to an internal
temperature of 170 F melts the collagen.
The collagen, then, is essentially the
same as gelatin and, melted, can help the
stew liquid, sauce, gravy, be viscous
and glossy.

USDA Choice beef is expensive. But, what
about other USDA grades? E.g., what about
retired dairy cows? Once, while I was
in NY State, I wondered what happened to
the many NYS retired dairy cows.
Investigating, I called a packing house
and got the short answer -- "think fast
food"!

By the way, with the cooking I've
described here, a Picnic Pork shoulder of
9.27 pounds yielded 76.3 ounces of cooked,
edible roasted pork with volume about 4
quarts. 3 ounces of that cooked pork makes
meaty BBQ sandwich.

Secret to slow cooking meat -- DONE. Hope
this helps your cooking efforts.