Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Question On Meat Tenderizing

My friend used to work for Ponderosa steak house. They got to work and took all the steaks and put them in restaurant totes and covered them with papaya juice. That is how they made their crappy steaks tender. The enzyme papayin tenderizes meat. Either papaya juice or as the active ingredient in Adolph's meat tenderizer.

You can leave it on too long. More importantly than how it's on is how long you cook the meat it's on. Long slow cooked meats, it's generally going to turn to mush. I use Adolph's on small pieces of meat I'm going to stir fry. I don't use it a lot, but if I don't have time to slow cook to tenderize, I cut the meat in small pieces, give it a shake, and stir fry.


I saw an episode of Good Eats with Alton Brown about marinades once. He said that people marinade meats in acidic marinades to tenderize them. This doesn't work. Acids dissolve meat very slowly and it's enzymes, not acids that are mainly responsible for breaking down meats. From basic biology I would have to agree. He said that the juice of papaya and pineapples have powerful enzymes that work well to tenderize meat. I have heard the same several times since. I have only used Adolph's, and believe it works and I don't expect acids to tenderize meats. I use them for flavor only. So far, it checks out.