Soak Minced Meat in Heavy Cream
Ground beef can be very grim without a little help. Baking soda is great for quick sautéing , but if you cook the minced meat for a lot longer, you should marinate it in heavy cream first.
As this tanned brine-baked chicken goddess convincingly proves, dairy does great things with meat. Their wonderful partnership works because the lactic acid softens the meat without turning it into porridge and increases moisture retention for juiciness. Add a little salt – good, a lot of salt – and you have the best 2K marinade on the planet.
Because lactic acid is the “active ingredient,” most dairy marinated meats depend on acidic ingredients such as yogurt, buttermilk and labne, rather than slightly sour heavy cream. But the low acidity of the cream is ideal for minced meat that doesn’t need to be softened too much. (The grinder has already taken care of that.) What he really needs is a little help with moisture retention – down the Strange Gray Meat Pond – and anything, whatever, to keep his proteins from clumping up in weird little lumps.
The cream does both beautifully and subtly. This subtlety is the main difference between a creamy bath and a baking soda sprinkle. The baking soda may be too strong; Leaving it on the minced meat for more than 15 minutes is a great way to start a casual texture journey. But cream isn’t acidic enough to break down proteins. Instead, due to its high fat and water content, the cream protects these proteins from extreme heat, so they don’t cook too quickly. The chemical processes are obviously different, but the effect is much the same as adding cornstarch to scrambled eggs : even after a few hours of boiling, minced meat pickled in cream remains silky and luxurious.
I learned this trick from a chili recipe from salesman and culinary stylist Jenn de la Vega , but it has been around for a long time, and James Beard himself swore to it, creating especially juicy burgers. It does everything it says it can’t be easier: For every pound of minced meat, add 1-2 tablespoons of heavy cream and stir well. (Sour cream or half and half will probably work too, but I haven’t tried them.) Refrigerate overnight. Use in chili, bolognese, meatballs, meatloafs, dumplings, enchiladas, or wherever you like. You won’t come back.