What I don’t understand is how it will give any flavor to the rest of the meat. won’t the inside just taste bland leaving only the area where you seasoned tasty?
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It actually does happen like that for thicker cuts which is why people often these meats. This allows the seasoning to soak into the inside of the meat.
Even a lengthy marinade will only penetrate a few mm, at best.
But, when you cut a piece of meat you don’t, generally, carve a piece out of the interior – you cut a piece which has some top, center and bottom in it. Since the top and bottom will have your seasoning you will taste it as a whole bite.
That’s why you massage the seasonings into the fibers of the meat.
The seasonings will only affect what they touch, yes, but if you rub the meat down and press the seasoning inwards, it’ll help it taste good throughout.
I work in a kitchen so maybe I can ELI5.
>What I don’t understand is how it will give any flavor to the rest of the meat. won’t the inside just taste bland leaving only the area where you seasoned tasty?
You’re right. The only place that will be affected by the seasoning is the places that seasoning is able to ‘touch’.
The longer the seasoning stays on the meat the longer it has to draw out some of the moisture and itself get into the pours of the meat. It will only ever go a few mm into the meat though.
When you cut and cook a piece of steak you want to consider how much surface area it has compared to its size. You can only season the surface area of the meat, so if you have a flat piece of meat you can effectively get enough seasoning per bite. If you had a rounded peace of meat then the guest who eats the meat may cut it in a way that they don’t receive much seasoning per bite because they aren’t receiving as much surface (seasoned) area of the meat.
I saw a comment about hamburger. Hamburger typically is seasoned completely through out the meat. It’s a chunk of meat that is ground into these small noodles of meat which are seasoned and molded together to form a patty.
The reason why you typically won’t be asked ‘how do you want your burger cooked’ but you will be asked ‘how do you want your steak cooked’ at a restaurant is that the grounding process causes the outside of the meat to now become the inside of the meat. And it’s the outside of the meat that contains most of the bad bacteria. So when you grind the meat, all the bad bacteria now are on the inside of the meat. Meaning the burger patty *must* be cooked completely to insure it’s safe to eat. With a normal piece of steak, it’s okay to be pink in the middle since most of the harmful bacteria are on the outside which is what gets thoroughly cooked.
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