You can use mango to make steak more tender. I highly recommend it on cheaper cuts that have a lot of collagen and which are tougher cuts.
Mango has special enzymes called proteases that break down protein to make it softer. Proteases can be used on steak to tenderize and make it into a more tender and softer piece of meat that melts in your mouth instead of being tough and chewy.
There are other fruits that have these special enzymes that break down protein in meat as well. You can find the other ones in my post about how to make beef more tender.
I also did a post where I used pineapple to tenderize a Chuck steak. Chuck steak has a lot of collagen in it, which is a good thing. In this post, I am tenderizing a ribeye steak with mango.
Why is mango a good meat tenderizer?
Mango contains protease enzymes that are known to break down protein and more specifically, collagen in beef and meat. This makes the meat more tender and less tough and chewy.
In a post from howstuffworks.com, there is a specific study that was done that gave us insight into how this works. I pulled a quote from this post below.
In the 1890s, researchers began isolating and studying bromelain, a natural mixture of two proteases (protein-digesting enzymes) found in pineapples. They discovered that bromelain is quite effective at dividing proteins such as the collagen in steak, as well as in your tongue.
howstuffworks.com
How does mango tenderize meat?
The proteolytic enzymes in mango digest other proteins by breaking them down into smaller pieces. Instead of having to chew the protein in the meat with your teeth so much, protease enzymes technically will do some chewing for you. These enzymes can be found in the skin, juice, and flesh of a mango.
How to tenderize steak with fresh mango?
Simply blend up some mango and completely cover a piece of steak with the puréed mango. You do not want to let it rest for too long otherwise the steak will become mushy. Then afterward you will want to rinse the mango off of the steak so that it doesn’t not leave any funky flavor when you cook it.
I will go over exactly what I did the other day.
I used a ribeye steak which does not need any tenderizing because they are a good quality cut of steak. I only used this because this is what I had, I bought a bunch because they were on sale.
I only used one mango and I didn’t use all of it. To put this into perspective I had a pretty thick steak that was almost a full pound of beef. I simply used the four pieces of mango flesh but did not use any from around the core.
Do not use any of the skin even though it has the enzyme as well. I used some of the skin with the pineapple and it was very hard to get it all off of the steak afterwards.
The next thing I did was blended the mango into a purée and then I poured it over the steak. Now, you really want to make sure you get it on all sides of the steak. I let it sit and marinate for about 25 minutes. I do not recommend letting it sit for any longer than that.
In my post about tenderizing steak with pineapple, I tenderized a chuck steak and let the pineapple sit on it for an hour because chuck steak has a lot of collagen and is a chewier piece of steak. Although, an hour was definitely longer than I should have let it sit for. The 25 minutes worked really well in this case with the ribeye steak.
I then rinsed off all of the mangoes really well to make sure there wouldn’t be any funky flavor later on when I ate the steak. The whole point of using the mango is to tenderize the steak, it is absolutely not for flavor.
Afterward, I wrapped the steak in a paper towel and let the water soak up for about 10 minutes. You do not have to do it for this long but you should definitely try to dry the steak some because it will be wet.
Then, I salted the steak and let it sit for about another 10 minutes. This I highly recommend because salt is what gives the steak a great flavor and when you let it sit on the steak it will absorb the salt internally. You can read more about this in my post about why salt is important on a steak.
Another thing I highly recommend is cooking your steak in a cast iron pan. After I salted the steak, this is what I used to cook it. Cast iron pans retain heat really well even when you put the steak in the pan. This allows you to get a really nice sear on the steak.
How long can you tenderize steak with fresh mango?
30 minutes is a good target for using fresh mango to tenderize steak. Any more time than that and you run the risk of tenderizing the steak too much. When you do that the steak will become too mushy and fall apart easily.
I tenderized a Chuck steak with pineapple for an hour and it came out to be too mushy. It depends on the steak as well, a steak that is usually tougher with more collagen will have the tendency to become mushy. This is because the collagen in the steak is broken down by the enzymes in the mango.
Can you use mango juice to tenderize steak?
Mango juice can be used to tenderize steak. The same enzymes in mango that tenderize steak are in the juice of the mango as well. Although, they will be more abundant in fresh mango juice.
If you want to use just mango juice then the most effective will be juice from a fresh mango. Fresh mango juice will have more enzymes and there are a lot of juicers that are affordable to buy.
Conclusion
So I haven’t talked about how superb the steak was yet. I think it was literally one of the best steaks I have ever had. It didn’t get too mushy with the mango.
As it was tenderizing, I noticed how the meat was starting to get a more dull red color. This is how you know it is working and you do not want to let the steak color get too pink. Because then it will most likely be mushy.
A ribeye steak is already really good but it was even better when I used mango to tenderize it. It was a ton more tender and more juicy!
There was no weird flavor from the mango after I rinsed it all off of the steak. I highly recommend using mango to tenderize a ribeye steak any day! It is totally worth it!
