Cooking with wine corks

Athenaues,

Although I have no direct litature in my home about cooking with corks, it is a practice that has been used for quite sometime in the mederterrian in regards to cooking octapus. as well, corks have been added to stews which are made with toughter cuts of meat to help tenderize the stew meat. perhaps my statment of useing corks in cooking is a little to much, I did mean that it is done in a number of cases, and is still practiced today, you can find cork in many octapus recipes. Also "more than you think" as I stated was meant also to people who had never heard of such a practice.

Thanks for pointing that out
cc

Cooking octopus with corks is done.

but i'm not about challenging you Athenaues about this because I have to much respect for your knowledge.

http://table.mpr.org/souptonuts/fish_octopus.html

Yes Vivian. According to Lydia Bastianich, wine corks do contain tannin.

Calling our chemists

Okay, so corks have tannin (well, of course -- they're from the bark of cork oak trees, after all). But what is it about tannin that produces the tenderizing effect? What's the chemical reaction (in layperson's terms, please)? It's got to be different from the reaction to the acid and alcohol in wine, no? Or is it?

This has gotten really, really fascinating!

As I said in the other "cork" thread, in Italy a cork (an old one, not moistened with wine) is commonly added in the water where octopus is boiled to tenderize the meat and I usually do it, although I didn't know the exact reason. It's an old housewives' trick and, as far as I know, it's used exclusively for cooking octopus.

Pongi

I'm not a chemist, but i'll take a shot at it.

Since tannins are of a phenolic compound, they have the ability to break down the protiens in the octapus, hence tenderizing it :)

TANNINS are an aka for TANNIC ACID. I think that it's the acid(s) that tenderize the meat.

Thanks, Koko, I knew that, just didn't remember that I did. (Darn this headcold!) :(