Need your help please

personally, I'm of the mind "Why poke holes in meat?" I am not one to "inject" anything into my meats. Proper cuts, prepared properly, rubbed, seasoned, marinated... cooked according to proper guidelines (moist or dry heat, tenderized etc etc). natural juices taste good. Properly prepared rubs and sauces add flavour without changing the flavour profile of your basic ingredients... I like the bark on a pork butt, but it's a highlight to the natural flavour of slow cooked pork, for example. But, that's just me.

 

As an aside... there are a ton of "flavour injectors" out there already, and they all work on the same principle... big ol' syringe. Seems like reinventing the wheel.

I've avoided such meats because the "marinade' contains unpalatable levels of salt. I've not made a large piece of meat recently, but if I did, I'd probably search for a recipe that's long on flavor and short on salt.

Adam,

  I have become kind of a fanatic about injecting.

Down here in Tx. we usually don't cook inside the house after Memorial Day.

I have even bothered a surgeon friend for a large syringe.

My new thing is grinding and smoking my dry spices. Garlic steeped in voo. grind all together including the mushy garlic and inject

lamb.go Right on the grill. Man

I don't know if this is common but I inject a lot of purees. I shoot roasted red pepper and jalapeno into skirt. Thge next day I rub and cook.

pan

What I've wanted to do for a while is to try and find a way of filling a steak with a little sphere of bearnaise in the middle so that it floods out as you cut into it.

Chrose,

not sure i am of much help as i do not use injector marinades for meats. don't know why really--guess i don't really see the point unless you are smoking meats, but i don't do that either. in my restaurant, our proteins are either grilled or sauteed. even when i do prime ribs or briskets, i either do a rub, a marinade and a slow roast. for roast chicken or turkey, it's either marinated for days or something put under the skin(like green chilies and garlic, butter). don't think it's from being lazy that i don't use injectors--think for me its simply avoiding another messy step that doesn't significantly improve the end result. then again, as i said before, i know nothing!

now chef, if you wanna talk about injecting strawberries with tuaca, grapes with frangelico or watermelon with vodka, i'm there!!!

joey

DEPENDS  If I were a manufacturer I would pump marinade in so far  as to add weight to the product so to recoup some of the cost of the marinade and time and labor.   Home however , I prefer a rub or  a marinade from outside, so I can control the outcome better.

I don't think I've ever really trusted the science of injecting. It seems to me that whatever you inject just fills the spaces between the meat fibers and is likely to be squeezed out when the fibers contract during cooking. Brining on the other hand acts on a molecular level and retains the flavored liquid. I have no evidence to support this theory; it's just my opinion.

I can see the idea of it in roasts and other proteins that are to thick to allow a regular marinade to penetrate. If you are a fan of making sauces for your meat you really don't need much flavor "in" the meat itself... I guess for me it isn't a step I could see myself ever really using. Like what was stated before... just another mess to clean up.

 

HUH?? 

 

All this Bar B Q  has given me an  idea. A Diet, sugar free Bar B Q sauce. More for diebetics then weight control. I have started to work on it.

 

Clearly a poor choice of words... From my very limited experience as a cook, the only way your average cook can get flavoring deep into a protein is by injecting it or brining it. If you have a roast for instance, I would not normally brine it personally. I might be missing an amazing boat but it would not have been my first choice. Some folks do not have sauces and gravies on their meals. If you are to make a rub or create a crust on that roast it is a surface flavor to my limited knowledge. And if you do not BBQ it... well not a ton of that flavoring rub gets deep in the meat. 

 

I am here to learn, and post is asking for what we know... this is all I know on the subject. You do not know that you are wrong unless you are shown, and I do not have much experience with larger pieces of meat. I have only just started cooking as a career. I do not get to make a very large assortment of foods in my job and my wife has a very limited diet. She can not eat much in the form of meat.

 

 

Ed, being a diabetic I could see the potential. All diabetics are not created equally. I eat bread regularly, it does not spike my bs much.

Rice, potatoes and pasta are the worst offenders, pretty much out of my diet.

 

Most bbq sauces are ok for me as I don't use much. Some may be affected  by the sugar content of the tomato product alone, others only from the added sugar.

 

I would like a sugar free or reduced sugar teriyaki sauce. I went to our local take out place yesterday that does a mean chicken teriyaki over charcoal.

I order without any extra sauce, just what it is basted in while on the fire, and it is still sugar over load for several hours.

 

I'm not big on sweets, don't sweeten tea or coffee, but when I do need some sweetener I use agave or stevia.