Cooked Meat for Too Long? Tips to Still Make Something Delicious Out of It

Such a shame: you have a lovely piece of meat at home, get distracted while cooking it and suddenly find yourself with a tough shoe sole. Or the poultry equivalent of a tough shoe sole. If there really is no saving it, we still have a few tips for what you can do with (far too) well-done meat.

It may of course also be that you simply weren’t quite sure how long that steak needed to be in the pan, in which case we recommend reading how to cook the perfect steak first. And if things still go wrong with your meat, you can always do the following:

Tips for saving meat that has been cooked too long

• The goal was to cook a tender and juicy chicken breast, but suddenly you’re left with a tough, stringy lump. Not great.
• Instead, pull the meat apart with two forks or your fingers.
• For a cold preparation, mix it with plenty of mayo, a dollop of Greek yogurt, mustard, celery slices and spring onion and voilà: chicken salad, delicious to take along in a sandwich.
• For a hot dish, you can also slice the chicken (against the grain) and use the pieces in, for example, a delicious chicken nacho rice casserole or a hearty tomato-based soup with tortellini and white beans. The chicken that requires a bit of serious chewing will then be nicely balanced by the soft tortellini and beans.
• That beef that seems completely ruined? It probably is, but the best thing you can do is mask it. I mean, throwing it away isn’t really an option either. Meat isn’t cheap (or at least it shouldn’t be), and with a little extra effort you can use it in something that’s delicious too:
• Let the tomato sauce with bacon for ragù for pasta simmer for a while first, then add the (over)cooked meat that you’ve pulled into small pieces.
• You can also add it to a delicious chili con carne (instead of minced meat), or use it in something from the Mexican quesadilla or burrito genre.
• And once you accept that it’s no longer the perfect juicy steak you had set your heart on, but is instead more like the pulled meat of yesteryear, you may suddenly find yourself incredibly happy with it again.

Bonus tip for overcooked vegetables

Add a little stock, a splash of cream, a touch of grated garlic and plenty of salt and pepper. Get out the stick blender, make an arty swipe with it on a plate, tell everyone it’s “a cream of cauliflower/broccoli/green bean” and nothing but praise will come your way!

Also read:

• Perfect steak for a large group
• Gordon Ramsay’s 10 tips for the best steak
• 9 cooking terms you should know