The independent, authentic guide to the restaurants of South Africa

Notice how much your chicken shrinks when you roast it? Or how meat is packed with a flat sponge-like paper beneath it? That’s due to the water that most meats these days exude – and they push out water because water has been injected into them. Added water mass is an easy way for mass meats to be heavier and cost more. The cut also looks more promising, it looks as if it should feed quite a few people – but then your chicken to feed a family leaves the family hungry. Bulk butchers argue that this added water is a way to prevent the home cook (a clumsy individual) from drying the meat out, (see this account of the uk), and not to make money off us… but I would rather have more meat and less overpriced water. All this adds weight, to use the obvious pun, to the use of free-range meats. They may cost a little more, but you are probably getting more meat for your money.
The proper way to mature beef, for example, is to hang it for a number of days. It air-dries and a black skin forms, while the meat softens and develops flavour. As it dries, it shrinks (and loss of bulk means loss of money) and then a good butcher cuts the black meat away – this is dressing the meat – another loss of bulk. The result, however, is properly tasty meat. A quick water injection earlier on means the bulk loss over the course of such ageing is lessened, but so is the gain in flavour.