If you regularly visit my website looking for cooking ideas you will have noticed that more often than not, one of my first instructions is to season the meat that you plan to cook and set it aside for an hour and up to two hours before cooking. This almost always applies to beef, pork, poultry or lamb and rarely to fish and shellfish. I have found that seasoning fish and shellfish just before cooking is generally just fine. If there are exceptions, I include these in the recipes.
I have two reasons for seasoning and then setting aside for an hour.
The first reason is that seasoning an hour before cooking will allow the meat to come to room temperature (if it has been in your refrigerator) and that time will allow the seasoning to absorb into the meat and enhance its flavor and tenderness.
The second reason is that I usually start my preparations for dinner about an hour before we are ready to eat. This is more a routine for me as I always preseason the meat that I will be cooking, and since I do this every time, I gather and ‘half prep’ the other cooking ingredients that I will be using.
The seasoning and the half-prepping usually take me about 10-15 minutes but it saves me that amount of time when I am ready to cook. This 15 minutes saves 15 minutes in getting the meal on the table.
I generally don’t spend more than a half hour in the kitchen for weekday meals and often less than that. All of my recipes include prep time so you should be able to see how long it should take to prepare the meal. If you split the prep time in two, do half with the pre-seasoning and the other half with the cooking, it may even seem less than the total time to cook your dinner.
It’s just a tip you might use when cooking in your household. It makes a lot of sense.
