Cutting meat against the grain?

Question

I've seen a lot of cooking tips that suggest cutting meat against the grain. For a novice like myself, how does one know that she is cutting against the grain? Please provide a very descriptive answer. Thanks!

Answer 1

If you have ever seen a diagram of a muscle in school or at the doctors office you will note that it is made up of long stringy sinew all lined up together ( imagine holding a package of cooked spaghetti lengthwise at both ends )

cutting against the grain would be cutting across this stringy sinew.

It is easiest to see this with cooked meat. For example chicken breast, when cooked and pulled at gently will seperate into long fibrous lengths.

It is harder to see this with raw meats, but you can usually be assured that the grain runs the length of the muscle. (An easy example of seeing the grain in raw meat would be with a flank steak )

cuts of meat, like most steaks or chops have already been cut against the grain as they are taken from rather large muscles.

Answer 2

Carve Meat against the Grain


The grain of the meat is the direction that the sting-like fibers of the muscle run. With a certain cut of meat, like this flank steak, it is very important to cut the meat against the grain. If you cut the meat parallel to the grain the meat, even if it is cooked properly, it will be stringy and fibrous. To get the most from this steak, a brisket, London broils, and other tougher cuts, always cut them against the grain.


To get nice broad slices, hold a fork at about a 45-degree angle. Use a thin slicing knife and follow the angle of the fork as you cut against the grain. The deeper the angle the wider the cuts. Continue down the steak until it is cut into even slices. It is best if the slices are very thin.

Answer 3

That's a complicated question as each cut of meat is different. First of all, the point of cutting meat against the grain is to make the muscle fibers as short as possible. This makes the cut piece of meat softer, or easier to chew, and provides a better experience for the eater.

Pieces of meat are generally made up of one or more individual muscles. The grain in each muscle typically runs in a slightly different direction depending on the work that it was designed to do. Take, for example, the muscle in your upper arm, the bicep. It is designed to allow you to bend your arm at the elbow. The muscle fibers (or grain) in the bicep run parallel to your arm so that when the muscle contracts, your arm bends.
Muscles in animals work in exactly the same manner, but it is often more difficult to determine exactly what each muscle in a cut of meat is intended for since most people don't have a very good understanding of the animal's make-up.

Like I said earlier, a simple answer isn't really possible for this question, so I'll give you a couple of examples to work with. In a chicken breast, most of the muscle grain runs parallel to the breastbone of the chicken, so if you're cutting a chicken breast the "long" way, you're cutting WITH the grain. If you cut it the short way, you're cutting against the grain. Often on chicken, I find that this is easier to see on a piece thats already been cooked. You'll see that if you try to shred a piece of chicken by hand, it will come apart in "strings." These are the muscle fibers and they show you which direction you would need to cut in order to cut against the grain.

Beef steaks (think filet mignon, porterhouse, ribeye, etc.) are already cut by the butcher against the grain. That is, the grain of those steaks runs primarily up and down. Some cuts of beef, like the flank steak, have a very distinct look because they contain very long, parallel muscle fibers.

Answer 4

Under normal circumstances, cutting meat against the grain is not recommended ie for steaks or any tender meat etc...

But if ur chopping meat for casserole it doesn't really matter.

Lets say u have a whole fillet of beef, which varies from bout 90cm - 180cm in lengths roughly (depending on the size of the cow)
Then imagine its a cylinder shape at the beginning of one end but it gets thinner towards the other end finishing in a point.

If u were to cut from the thin end towards the thick end it would be against the grain & if u looked closely u would see that the meats texture would be rough coz u would have upset the structure(it looks like the inside of an aero bar).
Then chopping in the opposite direction, which would be with the grain would make it as smooth as silk to look at & to feel.

Answer 5

When you look at a piece of cooked beef, let's say a grilled flank steak, you'll notice that there are parallel "lines" in the steak. If you were to cut along those lines, you would wind up with stringy beef slices. Against the grain means you determine which direction those lines are, then cut perpendicular to those lines, not with the lines. Wow, this would be so much easier to show than to try to describe in words!

Answer 6

The lines of the meat should be running up and down, since you slice from left to right, so the meat doesn't fall apart on you.