You and I live in a time when everyone is trying to find the maximum benefit from what they eat. Meat is no exception. Therefore, today we are talking about which cooking method is healthier: boiled, steam bath, or frying. There are many more cooking methods, but we will focus on the most popular ones.
Why do we cook meat?
Cooking meat breaks down tough fibers and connective tissue, which in turn makes it easier for us to chew and digest. Accordingly, the absorption of nutrients is faster and better.
Plus, cooking meat kills a variety of harmful bacteria, such as salmonella and E.coli, which can cause food poisoning or other health problems.
However, it is worth remembering that cooking meat also carries its negativity. For example, it reduces its nutritional value. Moreover, heating meat to high temperatures for extended periods can lead to the formation of harmful compounds that increase the risk of various diseases.
Therefore, the way meat is cooked is another important topic that will help us get the most out of a product that people have been consuming for over 250,000 years.
Frying and baking
Frying and baking are very similar cooking formats that use dry heat. For reference, moist heat is different in that the meat is cooked in some kind of liquid.
Roasting and baking temperatures range from 149-218 °C, and cooking times can range from 30 minutes to an hour or more, depending on the type and piece of meat.
This method of cooking is considered healthy and leads to minimal loss of vitamin C. However, if you fry or bake for a long time, a piece can lose up to 40% of B vitamins. They are lost along with moisture, and therefore overcooked meat is considered not only tasteless but also useless.
Grilling
Grilling is very similar to the previous methods, however, it uses slightly more heat and open air. The grill is designed to cook food at temperatures between 190 and 232 °C.
As much as we love kebabs and hamburger patties on the wire rack, unfortunately, this cooking method often leads to emissions of harmful substances.
Here’s what it’s about: When meat is grilled at a high temperature, the fat melts and drips onto the grill or surface. This creates smoke that contains toxic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They can rise and, accordingly, seep into the piece that we grill.
To prevent fat from getting on the heated surface, it is better to use a gas grill, rather than a classic charcoal or wood grill. Also, to reduce the amount of PAHs, you can use less fatty meats for grilling, which simply will not drain as much fat.
Extinguishing
This is already one of the ways to cook meat using moist heat.
Although the liquid is not used directly for cooking, it is generated during the process.
They are usually stewed at a temperature of 60-82 to 100 °C for a long period. This is that safe temperature that minimizes the formation of advanced glycation products (AGE), which are extremely harmful to the body.
However, on the other hand, prolonged braising times at low temperatures lead to the loss of vitamins and other nutrients.
Up to 60% of thiamine, niacin, and other B vitamins can be lost because all the juice just leaked out with them. However, if you stew meat in a stew format or then use the liquid formed after stewing for the sauce, this will help to assimilate most of the meat’s vitamins.
Cooking
If you can still use the liquid with all the nutrients when stewing meat, then this will not work with boiled meat. Of course, if we are talking about cooking meat for soup, then this is a completely different story.
Otherwise, cooking meat leads to the loss of almost all nutrients, so you end up with just a piece of protein. However, there is a way to get more out of boiled meat. And this is thanks to the sous-vide method.
Sous vide is that the piece is vacuum packed and cooked at a stable low temperature of 55-60 °C. In fact, in this way, you do not create the conditions for harmful emissions and do not allow all the nutrients to escape. After all, all the juice of the meat is stored in a vacuum.
A similar wet method of cooking meat is using a steam bath. Low temperatures are also used for this, however, when compared with sous-vide, the number of lost nutrients will be greater. Although it is worth noting that this method is available to everyone, in contrast to the vacuum one.
Whichever cooking method you choose, keep in mind that this is just one part of helping you get the most of your health benefits from the meat. Another component is, in fact, the choice of raw materials. After all, if you purchased a not-too-high-quality piece with impurities and growth hormones, no cooking method will be able to save it.
