Barbecue weekends have always been a tradition. Everyone in the family surely knows the basics when it comes to cooking delicious and tasty meats. However, there’s no book anywhere in the world that will say you couldn’t do a few tricks to make your favorite meat more flavorful.
Here are a few of those tricks prepared by the Learn Grill experts:
1. Sauces and Rubs
Applying sauces and rubs is probably one of the basic things you can do to add more flavor to different meats. However, there’s actually more you can do to bring out more flavor on your spices and rubs.
You can mix and match sauces and rubs based on your preferences. Just make sure to create a good balance between heat, spice, and color. This way, your food will not only taste good, but it will look appetizing as well.
The basics you can apply will be salt and pepper. But you can also add dried herbs, seeds, or powdered spices. And if you wish to use both sauces and rubs, that’s okay, too.
2. Smoke Wood
You can also add flavor to your favorite meat through smoke wood. According to experts, there are four best types of wood that you should try:
- Hickory brings out a savory, hearty, and balcony flavor
- Mesquite brings out a strong and intense flavor
- Apply for that sweet and somewhat fruity flavor
- Oak which falls between apply and hickory flavor scale
Smoking wood to flavor your meat will take some getting used to, and it’s definitely okay to experiment on different woods. After all, the flavor is always a matter of personal preference.
3. Injections
Besides flavoring your meat from the outside, you can also add more flavor inside by using injections – or a marinade injector, to be exact. This method is most effective on large cuts of meat and lean meats such as hams, whole chickens, briskets, and pork loin.
You can put in the injector a variety of sauces choices like broth, melted butter, olive oil, whiskey, hot sauce, or a combination of that. You can also go for something sweet by adding fruit juices.
4. Brines
Lastly, you can brine the meat. This is most effective if you want the flavor to get up to the meat’s very center. The process also takes a lot longer than marinating the meat and will involve the use of a lot of salt.
Traditional brining will include water and salt. However, if this is for meat grilling, you can also add sugar, some alcohol, substitute water with other liquids, and add more spices and herbs.
Now, brining meat usually takes long hours. A whole chicken can take 4-12 hours, while a whole turkey can take 12-24 hours. For smaller ones like boneless chicken pieces and pork chops, it will only take 30 minutes.
But, if you want the flavor to infuse better after soaking your favorite meats in the brine, air-drying before cooking is also highly recommended.
Summary
As you can see, there are several ways you can try to add more flavor to your meat. You can experiment on each one if which will work the best for you. Or, if you find it possible to combine each method, then why not?
