Expert: Enrique Torres - 5/19/2009

Question
I got this really tasty lamb leg cut into really thin chops that is preety tough, could it be tough because it needs to be cooked more, or just because it's too thinly cut?

Answer
Richie:
Meat toughness depends on:
a. Origin and type of meat: Lamb is one of the soft meats in the world.
b.Cut thickness: The more thick your cut is, the more tough it becomes during cooking.
c.Raw meat storage temperature: If you freeze the raw meat, it becomes more tough than if you keep them under refrigerating conditions using vacuum packaging.
d. Portion weigh, form and  size: When you cook any kind of meat try to cut into small pieces, this helps you to: reduce cooking time and to increase tenderness.
e. Cooking time: Some cuts need more cooking time than others, lamb leg needs about 2 hours to be cooked, but under this conditions it becomes dry and hard, i recommend to cut into small pieces before cooking and check each 10 minutes internal temperature (the right int. temp. is about 170 F)
f. Cooking system: Boiling water is the worst system to cook meat, the best is steam or wet air (some ovens are "combi" because they have both cooking systems dry and wet air).If you don't have much money to buy a very expensive oven, you can wrap the meat with aluminum foil and cook it inside any home oven (checking internal temp).
As you can see there are more than one single factor affecting meat toughness, but the most important is to cook smaller pieces to reduce negative effects,
Good luck,
Enrique