Cooking Meat - Timing Is Everything

How you cook your steak makes the difference between having a healthy meal and you-may-as-well-be-eating-mystery-meat.

Overcooking burns nutrients, and so the proteins, essential fatty acids, and vitamins that your body needs get destroyed. In their place, new chemicals that weren't in there before get formed, compounds like cyclic amines, lipid hydroxides, and glycated proteins. Some of these byproducts of overcooking are carcinogens, and others damage your blood vessels, especially the blood vessels in your kidneys.

So how do you cook meat right?

To guarantee that fish, chicken, steaks, oysters and all your other favorites retain their nutrients, you have to cook everything gently. The best way to prevent overcooking is to ensure that the meats stay moist. One of the biggest mistakes people make when cooking red meat especially is to try to "cook the fat out." The liquid that oozes or steams out of a roast, a steak, or a hamburger does contain a little fat, but mostly it's water and water-soluble nutrients including protein and minerals. By the way, those nutrients have flavor, so keeping them around ensures a more complex, intensely flavored meal. Here's what I recommend:

• Cook steaks and fish rare
• Leave the skin on chicken. Skin keep the moisture from escaping, prevents overdrying and it tastes great!
• Leave the yolks in your eggs just a little bit runny
• When baking, baste often
  
• Stewing and braising are healthier options than frying

So if you want to be healthy, you don't need to cut meat out of your diet. You only need to cook it right!

Bon Appetite