Beef Stew, BBQ Pork, Slow Cooking
Then for some decades, over and over, I followed supposedly some of the best recipes from supposedly some of the best qualified cooks, followed the recipes very carefully down to the last tiny detail, and all I got were disasters. I wasted a lot of groceries, time, effort, and money. I grew to have contempt for anything in a cookbook, to hate cookbooks.
The beef, and at times some red wine, were expensive, and all I got was stuff to flush -- literally.
Finally I learned what apparently is the secret: Buy a good thermometer. Set up the cooking effort so that can measure and control the temperatures of the cooking and the food accurately.
Then, for food safety, cook the food to at least 165 F.
For the common recommendation to simmer beef stew, absolutely don't do that, don't even be tempted to do that. Ignore, banish the advice to "simmer".
What a simmer actually is, that is, its temperature, is rarely defined -- from lots of cookbooks, some famous, I never saw a definition. The usual definitions, descriptions of "simmer", sound like 212 F, and my experience is that that is TOO DARNED HOT and soon will ruin any meat.
Why 175 F? I still don't have the best information, but the hints I did get are that over 175 F meat proteins shrink, "unwind", expel their liquids, and become dry and brittle much like charcoal.
The Secret: Be sure the temperature of the food, carefully measured and controlled, is over 165 F and never over 175 F.
So, I took that secret to BBQ of "picnic" pork shoulder. Unwrap, place on a V-wire rack, place in a roasting pan, don't cover the pan, place in an oven at 190 F, cook, maybe 22 hours, to a carefully measured internal temperature of the pork of 170 F.
Result: Soft, moist, juicy, succulent roast pork. If wish can easily separate the meat fibers and have pulled pork (an East Tennessee approach); instead I prefer coarsely to chop (a West Tennessee approach). To eat, add favorite BBQ sauce, warm in microwave, maybe top with coleslaw, and place between buns, bread, or toasted sliced bread. It's terrific.
I always thought that beef stew was a cooking technique for tough cuts of beef.
For beef stew, I called a beef industry trade group. Their recommendation was somewhat common: For the beef, use USDA Choice Chuck Roast; gee, that's quite tender -- are not really making stew.
Some of the sources, on food chemistry, etc. I consulted claimed that beef is tough only because of the collagen and that the muscle fibers are always tender. The slow cooking to an internal temperature of 170 F melts the collagen. The collagen, then, is essentially the same as gelatin and, melted, can help the stew liquid, sauce, gravy, be viscous and glossy.
USDA Choice beef is expensive. But, what about other USDA grades? E.g., what about retired dairy cows? Once, while I was in NY State, I wondered what happened to the many NYS retired dairy cows. Investigating, I called a packing house and got the short answer -- "think fast food"!
By the way, with the cooking I've described here, a Picnic Pork shoulder of 9.27 pounds yielded 76.3 ounces of cooked, edible roasted pork with volume about 4 quarts. 3 ounces of that cooked pork makes meaty BBQ sandwich.
Secret to slow cooking meat -- DONE. Hope this helps your cooking efforts.