Glossary of Culinary Meat Terms

June 25th, 2010

When you are dealing with and ultimately cooking meat, it is important to be familiar with all the recipe terms to ensure you experience the best possible outcome.

So whether you are wondering how to brochette or pave your rump steak; our following dedicated meat glossary can help you to transform your cooking experience into a delicious, appetising meal.

• Basting – if you are roasting one of our Australian knuckle joints, spooning its excess juices and melted fat over it, can help it to remain moist throughout.
• Boning – this technique simply involves removing the bones from your meat so that it can more easily be rolled or stuffed.
• Brochette - this cooking technique essentially involves cooking your meat on a spike or a skewer. To witness the best effects, pre-soak your skewers in water before you skewer the meat as this will stop the wood from burning as you cook.
• Deglaze – deglazing is useful if you have saved your meat juices from a previous cooking session. Simply add wine, stock or water to your congealed juices before stirring and bringing to a boil. When ready this sauce can be used to create a flavoursome gravy.
• Dice – this should consist of cutting your chicken or beef fillets into cubes of around 2.5cm.
• Escalope – whilst this term might commonly be used to describe breaded turkey fillets, in cooking escaloping involve cutting your meat into 1cm slices. Depending on your preference this meat can then be flattened using a hammer to help further tenderise it.
• French Trim – is a term commonly used to describe the trimming back of fat and muscle from between the bone of rack and rib cuts, the end goal being to show off the bones themselves.
• Marinating – a popular trick that you can use on all your meats, marinating simply involves soaking your meat in either an acidic liquid (i.e. lemon juice), oil (accompanied by herbs), spices or seasoning to help tenderise and enhance the meats flavour.
• Pave – paving is a specific method for cutting rump steaks into neat rectangular shapes.
• Mignon – this is usually a small whole fillet or the tail end of a larger fillet.
• Noisette – usually performed on pork and lamb, a noisette is traditionally a small sliced cut that is tied around the middle.
• Tournedos – involves cutting a beef steak into a 3-5cm thick slices before tying it with string in the middle.

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