How does one tenderize cuts of meat?

If you are purchasing less expensive (less tender) cuts of meat, then you need to cook them longer and slowly. For example, a pot roast needs to be cooked for several hours. Also a Swiss steak using a round steak needs to be cooked several hours to be most tender.

If you want a real tender steak, I would recommend springing for a filet mignon. It is most tender and worth the splurge.

Acids and enzymes will help make tough cuts slightly more tender, but nothing is going to magically turn tough meat into the melt-in-your-mouth tender that you get from quality beef. Acids and enzymes break down the cell walls of the meat, and they don't just act on the collagen connective tissue and fibers. That makes the meat less able to retain moisture through cooking.

Go to the restaurants that serve the finest beef. They don't use these techniques.

First, they buy the highest quality prime meat with heavy marbling. They dry age the beef to let the natural enzymes within the beef do their work. This involves time and significant loss due to trimming and shrinkage. They char the beef over a very hot hardwood flame. They finish in an oven to proper doneness, although anything cooked past medium - pink, is a waste of good meat, and you might as well have started with a cheaper grade. They let the meat rest before serving to allow the moisture to redistribute. The high heat needed to char the surface for flavor also tightens the muscle tissue and drives the moisture towards the cooler side of the meat. Therefore, a very hot hardwood grill of about 900+ deg. F. lets you get a flavorful char very quickly on both sides, with very little cooking beyond a thin layer of the surface - and that's a good thing, because if you cooked to full doneness at that temp, you would make that fine meat tougher. The char is for wood smoke flavor, color, and char gridlines (visual appeal), not to cook the meat through. The oven is used to precisely get the center of the meat to the doneness that the customer prefers, or if the wood grill is manned by a skilled person, the meat can be transferred to a cooler part of the grill so that more smoke flavor can be given to the meat when cooking through to doneness.

We use vinegar based marinades to break down the meat, like Italian Dressing or other types...Vinegar is what breaks down the toughness. Here's a quote about someone's use of vinegar:

"Tender Meat"

There are a couple different ways that you can tenderize meat. What I usually do is soak the meat in a covered bowl of white vinegar for about 2-3 hours. Be sure that you rinse the meat really well before you cook it. The vinegar helps to break down the fat and all the things that makes the meat tough.

You can also sprinkle some MEAT TENDERIZER on it and beat it with a mallet that will make it more tender too. The MEAT TENDERIZER can be bought just about anywhere where the sell spices and such.

Best of luck.

_________AND A DETAILED ANSWER IF SO INCLINED LOL______

"Meat tenderizers are proteolytic enzymes or proteases, enzymes specialized in breaking the peptide bonds between amino acids found in complex proteins. Meat is held together by a complex protein called collagen, and aside from mechanical tenderization and cooking, enzymes are the only other available meat tenderizers. Meat is often tenderized before cooking, to make it less tough and more suitable for consumption.

Meat tenderizers often come in a powdered form that can be sprinkled directly on the meat. Meat tenderizers dissolve some of the sinewy connections within the meat at room temperature. If meat tenderizers are allowed to act for too long, the meat can become squishy and lose its special texture.

The most popular meat tenderizer, called bromelain, is composed of a number of protease enzymes and harvested commercially from the stems of pineapple plants, where it is concentrated. The substance can be found throughout the entire plant, but is harvested from the stems because they are usually not consumed and are therefore available to be processed. Besides being a meat tenderizer, bromelain is an excellent anti-inflammatory agent, blocking metabolites that cause swelling. It has been used effectively to treat sports injuries and swelling caused by arthritis."

As a chef all I can say is slow cooking in stock with minimal salt is the best way to tenderise meat. Nothing wrong with cheap cuts of meat, they are the most delicious cuts in many ways. You should practice by making a Beef Goulash. It is easy for beginners and I tutor people at a cookery school. Google a recipe and go for it. If any recipes ask for Paprika use Smoked Paprika rather than plain Paprika. Good luck.

You can chemically tenderize meat by soaking it in an acid (e.g. lemon juice or buttermilk) or an enzyme (papaya juice).

You can mechanically tenderize meat by having it cubed (at the butcher or meat counter), by pounding it with a toothed mallet until the fibers break down, by using a 48-blade needle-type meat tenderizer (see link below), or by slicing it against the grain after it has cooked (like fajitas).

You can thermally tenderize meat by cooking it for a long time under low heat, which will break down the connective tissues (elastin, reticulin and collagen) as in the case of ribs.

Hope this is helpful:

Four Ways To Tenderize Meat

Inexpensive, tasty, economical cuts of meat, such as blade and chuck roasts and steaks, pork liver, pork shoulder, stewing beef, etc., can be fork tender by applying one of the following methods:

1. Pound thin slices of tough meat with a meat mallet to soften the fibers. When done properly, this corresponds to the “cubing” of steak.

2. Brush thin slices of meat with equal parts of mixed salad oil and lemon juice and let stand at least 30 minutes or overnight.

3. Cover large cuts of meat with buttermilk, refrigerate overnight, then drain.

4. Let meat stand overnight in a marinade made by heating, without boiling, equal parts of red cooking wine and water with 1 sliced peeled onion, 1 peeled section of garlic (optional) and 1 teaspoon of pickling spices per pint. Use part or all of this marinade as the liquid in cooking the meat.

Don't know about tenderising - I always cook cheap cuts of meat in my slow cooker on the lowest setting. Put it on first thing in the morning, forget about it til supper time and voila beautifully tender meat.