Tenderizing

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In cooking, tenderizing is a process to break down collagens in meat to make it more palatable for consumption.

There are three basic forms:

• Mechanical tenderization, such as pounding.
• The tenderization that occurs through cooking, such as braising.
• Tenderizers in the form of naturally occurring enzymes, which can be added to food before cooking.
  • Examples of enzymes used for tenderizing : papain from papaya, bromelain from pineapple and actinidin from kiwifruit.