Cutting meat: with or against the fiber?

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The Golden cut
Tender or tough: This is why how you cut your (raw) meat is important

With the right knife, meat is much easier to cut

© KucherAV / Getty Images

In addition to the cooking time, the cutting technique plays an important role in preparation so that a piece of meat remains tender and juicy after it has been seared: the direction of the fibers determines how you cut the meat.

If meat chews itself like a dry shoe sole after preparation, the cooking time is not necessarily to blame for the taste misery. In fact, the way you cut your meat has a huge impact on the quality of what you eat. Especially when the meat is solid from the ground up. Due to the different amounts of meat and muscle fibers as well as connective tissue, the wrong cutting technique is less noticeable with chicken breast than with a steak. However, if you value tender meat, you should know the most important cutting rules. Which this is and why the types of knives are also decisive for the cutting technique is explained as follows.

Cutting meat: this is the right technique

There are only two ways to cut meat: Either parallel or across the grain – but only one variant is the right one. This is simply due to the length of the fibers, which are very difficult to chew and make the meat as tough as the sole of a shoe. They are largely retained if the meat is cut parallel to the fibers (i.e. the white stripes). If, on the other hand, you cut the meat across the fibers, they don’t have to be cut up while chewing. This makes the meat much easier to chew. In plain language this means: Always cut across the grain. Because long fibers make the meat tough and short fibers make it tender. This applies equally to raw and cooked meat.

That is why a meat knife is the best choice

If you chop up meat with a knife that is too small, you will not be able to make “clean” cuts. Quite the opposite: if the cut surface frays, this has a negative effect on the cooking process. In other words, the meat becomes tough. For this reason there are special ones Meat knife, which are characterized by a long and narrow blade. With them, the meat is cut smoothly and is nice and tender and juicy after preparation. However, you should always make sure that your knife is sharp – because a blunt blade does not create a smooth cut. Here you can have a classic Knife sharpener or Knife block use with ceramic whetstone to sharpen the knife.

These knives are suitable for cutting meat:

1. Tefal meat knife

  • Total length: 33 cm
  • Blade length: 20 cm
  • Material: stainless steel

2. Fiskars meat knife

  • Total length: 36 cm
  • Blade length: 24 cm
  • Material: high quality steel

3. Carving knife from WMF

  • Total length: 32.5 cm
  • Blade length: 20 cm
  • Material: alloy steel

4. Sunnecko meat knife

  • Total length: 32.3 cm
  • Blade length: 20.3 cm
  • Material: damascus steel

5. Paudin’s meat knife

  • Blade length: 20 cm
  • Material: damascus steel

Cutting meat: the best tips and tricks

In addition to the right technique and a sharp knife, there are other tricks that you can take to heart when cutting meat:

  1. If the meat fibers run at an angle, such as with a piece of fillet, you must also cut the meat at an angle to the fibers. Otherwise, the 90 degree rule always applies.
  2. Any tendons are removed along their running direction, i.e. you first cut the meat in half and detach them from the meat – before you chop it across the grain.
  3. If you want to prepare a goulash, the meat must first be cut across the grain in slices before you then cut it into small pieces.
  4. If the fibers do not all run in the same direction, as is the case with the belly meat, for example, they still cut across the main direction – use most of the fibers as a guide.
  5. If you are unsure how to cut the meat, you can tear off a small piece of it. You can see the grain direction better in the bleed.
  6. Another way to determine the grain direction is to cut off a piece of meat and sear it briefly. If it’s tender, you’re right. If it is tough you will have to try again.

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