John Lanchester, “The Wonder of Stew”, Esquire, April 2009:
Reading up on the science of slow-cooking meat makes it clear why it’s so hard to get it right. … [T]he collagen in [connective tissues], when you cook it, breaks down into gelatine — which is where stews get their satisfying, luxurious feeling. But there is a problem. Muscle fibres start losing their liquid at 60-65°C — that’s the point at which meat starts to dry out. But collagen doesn’t start to dissolve into gelatine until around 70-80°C. So the meat starts to dry out before it begins to soften, which leads to so many stew catastrophes. Collagen takes a good long while to turn into gelatine and the stew needs to be made hotter, for a period of time, for this to happen fully. You need to hold your nerve and keep it in this non-tender zone long enough for the stew to make its magic transformation.