> I have been told that cooking doesn't change the
> tenderness of meat.
> It becomes tender by beating it and by aging it, but
> not by cooking.
> A cooked steak should be as easy to eat as a raw
> one. Or easier.
> Now, cooks what do you report?

Someone posted a link recently that addressed this
issue (at least I think it was posted here. Was it
posted by Phil?). As I remember the text of the
article, it was conjectured that primitives cooked
meat using heated rocks. The authors stated that this
slow cooking method not only made the meat safer to
eat, but also tenderized the meat and made it easier
to chew. To support their point, they noted that this
is a technique (slow cooking meat to tenderize it)
that most cooks are familiar with today. As a meat
eater, I can claim that when I have eaten at a local
restaurant that slow cooks ALL of their meats, it is
always tender and "melts in your mouth".

> Definitely.  You can use that stone cutter to strip
> away the skin, to detach cuts of meat from bones and
> cartilage, to cut it into strips for sharing, and to
> cut into pieces for eating. There is simply no
> question that a sharp cutting tool makes it easier
> to eat meat.

I posted this about a month ago, but I think it bears
repeating at this time. I watched a show on the
History Channel called "The Toolbench", a history of
tools (emphasis on modern, electric tools). A couple
of anthropologists were studying early human use of
tools and demonstrated how incredibly effective
primitive tool use was. Here's the demo in a nutshell:

They started with a dead gazelle-like animal.
They smacked a couple of rocks together until one of
the rocks cracked apart, leaving a nasty looking sharp
edge. WITHIN MINUTES they had skinned the critter
enough to start slicing off large hunks of meat. Then,
once the meat was removed from a hindquarter, they
used another large rock to crack open the leg bone to
expose the marrow.

After watching this exhibition, I could only conclude
that: even if they spent HOURS finding and killing the
animal, the result would have been well worth it. They
obviously had enough meat to last the two of them
several days. Throw in a little gathering of some root
veggies and/or fruit, and you'd have your entire menu
for a week.

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