1,601 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies that are necessary for its operation.
By continuing to browse, you agree to their use (learn more...).

Incise some meats before cooking

Have you ever had this rather unpleasant phenomenon: you grill a meat, a pork chop or a veal cutlet for example, and during cooking it becomes completely deformed?

It takes a very strange shape, a bit difficult to describe, a sort of cone around the central area of the meat, which also hinders the cooking process.

14 K 4.9/5 (15 reviews)

Last modified on: June 19^th 2021

For this post Comments Lasts posts Follow

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

What happened?

This painful phenomenon is related to the structure of the piece of meat, if you look at the picture of these 2 chops, the blue arrows are framing the most fleshy part (the "nut" in French).

pork chop

And the nut is surrounded by a fairly thin, white ring, which is a much fattier part of the meat.
During cooking, especially if it is quick, this fatty part will shrink, without breaking or cutting, and thus contract the nut, hindering its cooking, not great...

What to do to avoid this?

This is fortunately quite simple, just cut the fatty part, incise it in at least 1 place.

cotelette incision of the ring

A good sharp knife cut the ring (in this picture in 2 different places), and this way you are sure that, when cooking, your piece of meat will remain flat.

Note that this applies mainly to meats like chops, cutlets, or even steak, but more generally to any piece of meat that is a bit flat and you're worried about it shrinking.

To summarize: To avoid deformation when cooking a piece of meat, slit it around the nut.

Lasts posts

Hot Emulsified Sauces

In French cuisine, sauces are a very important part of a recipe—not just a side dish. In fact, they’re so important that, especially since the time of Auguste Escoffier, they’ve been classified into categories. And among these categories are “hot emulsified sauces,” or lukewarm ones. ...
September 9^th 20268525

Hot Dishes and Cold Dishes

When plating or serving a dish—whether hot or cold—on a plate, it’s very important to make sure they’re both the right temperature; in other words: if the dish is hot, the plate should be hot, and conversely, if the dish is cold, the plate should be cold. Is this really important? Let’s...
September 2^nd 20267903

In baking, cold is your friend

When you bake at home—especially when making pie crusts—you’ve probably noticed that it’s quite difficult to work with the dough when it’s hot. It gets soft, is hard to roll out, and breaks or crumples very easily. And this doesn’t just happen when it’s hot—even in a comfortable...
August 26^th 20268255

With vinegar?

When you buy a jar of pickles labeled “in vinegar,” you’re looking for their tangy, crunchy flavor to go with cold cuts, sandwiches, or salads. You expect to find small gherkins preserved in vinegar, with salt and herbs, but is that really the case?
July 15^th 20261,8064.8

Congratulate the chef

You've just finished a meal that you really enjoyed. The server approaches with the usual question: “How was it?” And then, as a natural reflex, you simply reply, “Yes, it was very good.” However, when the meal was truly outstanding, this brief exchange deserves a little more. .
July 7^th 20261,294 35

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Steam for baking bread

What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...
June 16^th 2021151 K4.5

What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?

This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
February 7^th 2017138 K 14.2

Candied fruits: don't get ripped off

Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
June 21^th 201771 K 24.2

The color of the bread crumb

When you go to buy bread, at your baker's, at the time of the choice, if you hesitate of course, you will undoubtedly be very sensitive to the color of the crust, and you will be right. The color of the crust, from golden, to sometimes very dark, deep brown almost black, depending on the maturity...
April 30^th 202223 K4.6

The little trap of thick cream

When you need to add cream to a recipe, you might be wondering: thick (heavy) cream or liquid cream? In most cases, there's no big difference: you can use either. But there is one exception, and that's when the cream needs to be cooked, for a sauce for example, and here the difference between...
December 13^th 20249,5725