We hit 1,000! You are incredible. Thank you so much for sharing the newsletter and helping us reach our goal for the year. And 20 days early too! Yeah, we’re overachievers!
And for the 35 new folks, welcome! I’m excited you’re here to learn more about cooking with us.
Ready to add another technique to your repertoire?
Pulled pork. Ropa Vieja. Shredded BBQ chicken. Carnitas.
These shredded meat dishes are famous for a reason! Succulent. Tender. Juicy.
It’s magical to cook tough cuts of meat low and slow until the meat is tender enough to pull apart with a fork. But you don’t have to stop there. Whether it’s braised chuck roast, smoked pork, or a poached chicken breast, you can continue the alchemy by shredding it all to pieces.
Let’s pull apart the layers (see what I did there 😉) and find out what’s going on.
Shredding meat:
So shredded meat is easier to eat in a taco or a sandwich. It won’t fall out as you take bites.
A nicely charred, grilled chicken breast might turn out dry. But if you shred it and mix in some BBQ sauce, no one will know the difference!
And remember this.
It’s not better or worse to shred. It’s just different.
For example, one night you might braise beef and serve it in whole pieces over polenta. Then the next night, you take the leftover beef, shred it, and mix it into a tomato sauce for pasta. It becomes a completely different dish!
Okay. You’ve taken slow-cooked, tender chunks of meat and shredded them. You’ve got this tender, juicy, web.
And you can stop there.
But that soft mass of shredded meat is a bit one noted in flavor and texture.
What if I told you you could create a dynamic combo of tender, juicy meat that is also crispy and intensely flavored at the same time?
Here’s how to continue the transformation.
Just re-introduce heat.
Heat creates flavor and a crispy texture through the Maillard reaction. And while we often only think about it for raw food, the same principle applies to cooked food too.
Whether you want to call it frying, crisping, or searing, here’s the technique:
Think of it this way. It’s the same technique as cooking hash browns. 🤯 You’re just swapping the shredded potatoes for shredded meat. You get a wonderful combo of crispy and soft all in one. The differences in texture turn it into a party in your mouth.
Easy, right?
There is one last thing to keep in mind.
Heat causes the fibers in the shredded meat to contract and expel internal moisture. So by cooking the meat again, you run the risk of drying it out.
My guess is you have experienced this shred-then-fry technique if you’ve ever eaten carnitas. It’s common to crisp the pork after it’s been slow-cooked.
But I intentionally didn’t mention it until now. Why? I wanted you to know this technique is versatile! Reapplying high heat to cooked food can transform it. 🔥
If you throw a big BBQ, you can take a pan full of pulled pork and throw it under the broiler. You’ll brown the top of the pork and achieve a similar result as frying it in a skillet—you can just crisp up a lot more at once!
Or you can take shredded beef and stir-fry it in a smoking-hot wok along with some veggies and soy sauce. You’ll have a killer dish you can serve over rice.
So the next time you slow cook something, consider transforming it not once, but twice, by shredding and then frying it
Do you have any advice on how I can improve the newsletter? Ideas for topics I can cover? Hit reply and let me know. I love hearing from you.
As always, thanks for reading. Catch you next week!
Luciano 👨🍳
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