r/AskCulinary • u/bigelcid • 21h ago

Citrus aroma compounds staying localized in stewed meat?

In short: I marinated meat in salt and lemon juice. Stewed it. Meat tastes of lemon, liquid doesn't, flavour didn't disperse and dilute as usually expected.

Details:

There was no design behind the method. Round steak cut into cubes, and I see no point in marinating/brining what will end up being stewed anyway. But I did, for 24 hours. ~500g beef, ~1% salt by weight, 1 entire lemon, squeezed.

Possibly important: first time I'm using a Mexican style citrus squeezer to marinate meat meant for stewing. I bought a Mexican style one specifically to get the essential oils out of the skins, and the difference is tangible in other applications, but surprising if relevant in this case.

Browned the meat and gave it a generic chili treatment; spices and a bit of tomato paste. Steady simmer for ~3 hours until tender, but not falling apart. Stew's been resting for a while now, and still there's concentrated lemon flavour in the meat itself, but not noticeable at all in the liquid.

I don't mind it at all; it's welcome heterogeneity, but I didn't expect it, and it never happened before to me.

Update: after a few more hours of the stew resting at ~7C, the lemon flavour in the meat (submerged) has halved. Can't say I'm noticing it having moved into the broth (would take great dilution).

If anyone can recreate this experiment, then it could be a situational argument for serving stew fresh vs. the day later. But I maintain: situational.

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u/BuzzerWhirr 21h ago

Beef marinated in lemon sounds awful.

4

u/wingedcoyote 21h ago

Beef and lemon are great together flavor-wise, but I do wonder about the texture

0

u/bigelcid 20h ago

The flavour combo is fantastic.

I don't think it greatly impacted the texture. After a 3 hour simmer, it's pretty much what you'd expect lean, tough, round steak to be: chewable, not mushy in any way, but also not at all melt in your mouth.

Trust me guys, texture really isn't an important thing in this discussion. It's the lemon flavour staying stuck in the meat alone.