Confession time: I didn’t own a meat tenderizer before this test kitchen. Whenever I wanted to make something that needed cutlets pounded out, I’d use the bottom of my eight inch nonstick skillet. Every time, I said I should maybe get a real meat pounder, but then I’d be done with it and forget. Not to spoil the review, but pretty much all of these products are better than a skillet, especially when it comes to how wobbly my skillet handles wound up.
Now that I’ve got a good pounder, I’ve come to really appreciate how easy and versatile chicken cutlets can be. They’re the key to delicious and simple weeknight dinners in one skillet. Pound some cutlets thin, dredge in flour, pan-fry in a little oil, then build a pan sauce from the fond. It’s simple, but makes an amazing supper in half an hour. Read on, and find out what a pounder can do for you.
UPDATED: 1/06/2021
| PRODUCT | TYPE | RATING | COST |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Norpro | Pounder | ★★★★★ | $$ |
| 2. Jaccard | Blade | ★★★★★ | $$ |
| 3. Leifheit Pro | Combo | ★★★★☆ | $$$ |
| 4. OXO Good Grips | Blade | ★★★★★ | $$ |
| 5. Norpro Grip-EZ | Pounder | ★★★★☆ | $$ |
| 6. KitchenAid | Combo | ★★★☆☆ | $ |
| 7. Sportsman | Crank | ★★☆☆☆ | $$ |
| 8. Spring Chef | Combo | ★★☆☆☆ | $ |
| 9. OXO Good Grips | Combo | ★☆☆☆☆ | $$ |
Meat Tenderizers: What to Know
How They Work
Meat is tough for several reasons. It might be tough because it’s extremely lean, because it’s full of connective tissue, or because the individual muscle fibers are large. That last one is the key here. Muscles that are well-exercised get bigger, producing tougher meat. Those muscles tend to be cheap, but also flavorful. The goal of tenderizing is to mechanically break down those big muscle fibers to produce a cut of meat that’s tender, flavorful, and cheap.
Styles and How to Use Them
There are several styles of meat tenderizer out there for doing different jobs. Let’s take a look at them.
FLAT POUNDERS
Flat pounders are more tenderizer-adjacent than they are meat tenderizers, but they’re in this roundup because they’re very similar in operation. Several companies make reversible pounders with both a flat and a spiked side, too.
A flat pounder does break down muscle fiber a bit, but its main job in the kitchen is to flatten out meat into cutlets. A pounded-out cutlet cooks faster than the unpounded thicker piece of meat since there’s less interior that needs to be heated. Meat is also pounded to make it an even thickness — a chicken breast left alone is often overcooked at the pointy end, but pounded flat, the whole thing cooks at the same rate.
Pounding meat flat is also usually the first step when you’re going to stuff meat.
Usage
To use a flat pounder, set the meat on a sturdy cutting board and start working it from the center out. You’re spreading the meat out, so as the pounder comes down, pull the meat towards you. As you pound, rotate either your direction of pull or the cutting board so you work evenly in all directions. Here’s a quick video of this technique, or you can catch our review video below.
If you want to take out a little insurance against making a mess or damaging delicate meat, get your hands wet, rub a little water onto the meat, then put it in a plastic freezer bag. Pound it through the bag as before.
A flat pounder can be a useful tool to have around the kitchen for other reasons. Use your pounder to smash garlic, shell nuts, or crush ice.
SPIKED POUNDERS
Spiked pounders are for tenderizing, and are often found on the other side of your flat pounder. The idea is that the cutting power of the spikes and the crushing impact of the mallet will break up the muscle fibers of tough meat.
Usage
Using a spiked pounder is a lot like using a flat pounder, but you need to be much more careful to not tear the meat. Work center out like with a flat pounder, but instead of trying to pull the meat outward, come straight up-and-down with the spiked pounder. If you pull with the spikes dug in, you’ve got a good chance of tearing. Flip the meat over to work both sides.
CRANK TENDERIZERS
Crank tenderizers take things up a level. A crank tenderizer clamps to your table. You put your meat in the top and turn the crank. Spiked rollers rotate, pulling the meat through. The meat fibers are cut by the spikes and crushed between the rollers. These things work fast and really chew through the meat. They’re very popular with hunters who want to really do a number on tough game.
Sportsman was great fun to use, less fun to clean.Usage
To use one, you’ll first need to cut the meat to shape. Consult your manual to find exactly what the limits are and stick to them. Too thick and the meat won’t go through; too thin and the rollers won’t fully engage. You’ve also got to be a bit narrower than the opening so there’s room for the meat to spread. Once you’ve got the meat in shape, line it up at the top, turn the crank, and be amazed. Watch those fingers — they’re made of meat too.
NEEDLE TENDERIZERS
Needle tenderizers cut out the crushing pressure of a spike pounder or crank tenderizer in favor of lots of cutting action. These units have many blades on a spring-loaded hand-piece. When you press down, those blades make dozens of little cuts, taking apart those thick muscle fibers.
Usage
To use a needle tenderizer, start in the center and work out. Start with the meat on a sturdy cutting board, line up the tenderizer’s foot on the meat, and press straight down hard. Let the spring return the blades to neutral, then move over a tenderizer foot-width and repeat. Once you’ve done the whole thing, you can run it again on the other side or perpendicularly if you want another round of tenderizing.
These things are basically uncleanable without a dishwasher, so if you want to take a needle tenderizer camping, you’ve got to use it once per trip.
>> Just Jump Me Down to the Results & Ratings
Test Kitchen
Chicken Piccata
To test the flat pounders, we made chicken piccata. For this, we tried to flatten out some absolutely gigantic chicken breasts to about ½” thick. Once flattened (or as flattened as the pounder would allow), we dredged them in flour and shallow-fried them in a little oil. After cooking all the meat, we made a pan sauce with lemon, shallots, and capers.
Now, these breasts were unreasonably huge. If I just wanted a good meal, I’d have cut them in half first, then pounded the more reasonably sized pieces into cutlets. We decided not to do that to give these pounders their maximum challenge.
Country-Fried Steak
Everything with spikes got a chance to make some country-fried steak. We started with a beef bottom round roast, cut it into ½” thick slices, then dredged them in flour. From there, we hit them with the spiked pounders/crank tenderizer/needle tenderizers. After another dredge in flour, we dredged in egg, and flour again before a short rest. We then shallow-fried them in some oil. We skipped the gravy because it came out terrible in the interest of really looking at the finished product.
What We Evaluated
- Ease of Use
A good pounder/tenderizer should be easy to use. The grip should be sound and comfortable and the unit should work with a reasonable amount of effort.
- Control
I need to be in control of what’s happening to my food. This rating is to evaluate how well I could direct the force of the tool where it needs to go.
- Effectiveness
All of that pales in comparison to the basic question of whether it works. Did the tool in question produce a suitable cutlet/tender piece of beef?
- Cleanup
Food safety is king, and these have the potential to carry around little bits of raw meat. It’s paramount that we be able to get these clean. This rating shows how much work it took to get these clean and safe.
Ranking & Rating the Best Meat Tenderizers
1. Norpro Meat Pounder #6211 — ★★★★★
The Norpro 6211 meat pounder is a flat meat pounder with an offset handle. It’s got a heavy disc with a handle that extends off to the side with enough vertical clearance to save your knuckles. This tool’s price was about average for this group.
Ease of Use — ★★★★
The handle is comfortable for me, but it’s pretty beefy. If you’ve got small hands, you might not like your grip on this thing. The length of the handle and the weight of the head make it come down like a ton of bricks with a little swing. It takes care of the chicken with ease.
Control — ★★★★
My control over the power of the whack with the Norpro is great – choke up for a light tap, move to the end of the handle for a powerful wallop. Control over the placement could be a little better. To keep the orientation dead-on, you’ve got to loosen up a little, but that takes away from being able to pinpoint the location.
Effectiveness — ★★★★★
This did a great job on the chicken, flattening it out pretty much perfectly. Even these giant chicken breasts pounded down nice and flat. This came through in the taste of the chicken, which we rated as one of the best. The pounder makes a difference in that by shaping the breast just right for quick, even cooking.
Cleanup — ★★★★★
Cleanup was a breeze. The whole thing cleaned off quickly with minimal effort. One place to watch out for if you buy this pounder: right on the underside where the handle meets the disc is a little inside corner that needs your specific attention.
Overall — ★★★★★
This worked great and was easy to use. We recommend it as the best value of the flat pounders, though if you have small hands you might want to try this out first to see if you can get a solid grip.
2. Jaccard Original Super Meat Tenderizer – 48 Knives #200348 — ★★★★★
The Jaccard is a needle tenderizer with 48 blades, arranged in three rows of sixteen. Cost is right in the middle of the set.
Ease of Use — ★★★★
It looks like world’s worst grip exerciser, but works like a champ. Unlike the OXO, this one has a case for protection instead of a safety catch, but operation is basically the same. You’ve got to give it some power the same way.
Control — ★★★★★
It’s easy to position and straightforward to control depth. Nothing to say when it works this well.
Effectiveness — ★★★★★
This steak wasn’t quite as good as the OXO’s steak, but that might have been a coincidence. Still super-tender and flavorful.
Cleanup — ★★★★★
Like the OXO, the Jaccard has to go in the dishwasher, where it cleaned up well.
Overall — ★★★★★
The Jaccard is extremely good at tenderizing meat. I like this slightly better than the OXO since it’s quite a bit bigger, making it easier to use.
3. Leifheit Pro Line Meat Tenderizer #23014 — ★★★★
The Leifheit is a combination flat pounder and spiked tenderizer, and has a vertical handle. The handle screws into a reversible plate, with one side flat and one side with spikes. This was the most expensive tool in the test, costing nearly triple the average.
Ease of Use — ★★★★★/★★★★★
For both chicken and beef, it was shocking how well this worked. I was looking at it in surprise after a few hits. On the chicken, I had to grab the Norpro Grip-EZ to compare the weight in my hands. They’re really close to the same weight, but the Leifheit works much better. Each hit does more work, and I can’t explain why. When working on the spiked side with the beef, the spikes penetrated well and didn’t clog up at all. On first looking at it, I was concerned that a good whack with the spikes facing up might catch a finger on a spike, but the well-designed handle kept my pinky clear.
Control — ★★★★★/★★★★★
The vertical pounders are the best for control, and this one comes down exactly where I wanted it, with the right force, and the right angle.
Effectiveness — ★★★★★/★★★
The Leifheit did an amazing job on the chicken, providing a nice even chicken breast that we noted was especially good. Pounding the meat even really does pay dividends in the cooking process. The beef was not as good. Though the spikes penetrated the meat well, the beef’s tenderness was fairly average. It took a cheap piece of meat up to an acceptable piece of meat, but no better.
Cleanup — ★★★★
This tool cleaned up pretty easily, including those very prominent spikes. Two places to look at carefully if you buy this pounder are the screw threads and the gasket. The screw threads are unavoidable on a pounder of this style, but the gasket was a surprising miss for something this costly. A plastic gasket sits in between the handle and the plate, and it looks very loseable and breakable, as well as tough to clean. I expected a little better for the money.
Overall — ★★★★
This thing worked great as a flat pounder and pretty well as a spiked tenderizer. The only reason why this isn’t the #1 recommendation from this test kitchen is the price tag. You could buy our best-value flat pounder (NorPro 6211) and our best-value tenderizer (Jaccard ) and have enough left over to buy 8 meals worth of meat. It’s great, but it doesn’t justify the cost.
4. OXO Good Grips Bladed Meat Tenderizer #1269580 — ★★★★★
The OXO Good Grips Bladed Meat Tenderizer is a needle tenderizer with 50 blades arranged in five rows of ten. The cost is average for this roundup.
Ease of Use — ★★★★
Unlock the safety catch, set on the steak, and press down hard. Watching this thing work gave me the giggles. It just works that well. You’ve got to give it some power to get it moving, but it really does its thing well.
Control — ★★★★★
Right where you want it. The way this operates is simple and sure.
Effectiveness — ★★★★★
This produced the best steak we ate. It was super-tender and super-flavorful.
Cleanup — ★★★★★
This is dishwasher-safe, which is good because you really can’t clean the inside rows of blades by hand. The housing comes off for complete cleaning, which is nice.
Overall — ★★★★★
The OXO is great. If you want country-fried steak, you should get this, or the next one. I lean slightly away from this because it’s pretty small, so you need more stabs than the Jaccard.
5. Norpro Grip-EZ Meat Pounder #7033 — ★★★★
The Norpro Grip EZ is a flat meat pounder that operates vertically. It’s got a smooth heavy plate with a handle extending straight up the middle. Its price fell in the middle of the roundup.
Ease of Use — ★★★
When I first started pounding on the chicken breast, I liked how it felt in my hand. The handle is comfortable and provides a firm grip. The downside is that I had to provide all the power. It’s got weight, and comes down with force, but you’ve got to really work to flatten that chicken breast.
Control — ★★★★★
The advantage of the vertical pounder is incredible control. I had no worries at all slamming that thing down near my other hand. You’ve also got very precise control of how hard you hit, since it’s exactly as powerful as your fist.
Effectiveness — ★★★★
The Norpro Grip-EZ did a good job working down the giant chicken breast. There came a point, ultimately, when I just could not apply enough power to clean up a tall spot in the center of the breast.
Cleanup — ★★★★★
Cleanup was a snap. The smooth surface on the bottom cleaned off instantly with a little hot water, and there are no hard-to-clean places where nastiness can build up.
Overall — ★★★★
On the whole, the Norpro Grip-EZ is a perfectly reasonable choice. The price is right and it does its job. If you like the vertical pounder, this is your best value.
6. KitchenAid Gourmet Meat Tenderizer #KO119OHOBA — ★★★
The KitchenAid Gourmet Meat Tenderizer is a hammer-style unit with a flat face and a spiked face. It tied as one of the cheapest in the test.
Ease of Use — ★★/★★★
The first big surprise when picking up the KitchenAid was how bad the handle was. It’s much thicker than any of the other mallets, and it put the thick side of the handle against the first joint of my fingers with the skinny part against my palm. It was much more comfortable to hold with the head parallel to the table.
It’s also on the light side for a mallet, so it took a good amount of power to get a good whack on the chicken breasts. The spiked side was a little better, and the spikes did an okay job penetrating the meat. They also stayed relatively clean throughout the process.
Control — ★★★/★★★
Aside from the awkward handle, this mallet was easy to put where I wanted it to go. That handle made the angles a little off sometimes, which led to the edge digging into the meat a little bit.
Effectiveness — ★★★/★★★
The chicken cutlet came out reasonably well. The flat side is not quite flat, which made the finished product a little uneven. The mallet is also a little too light to get a really good whack in, which didn’t help against these monster breasts. The beef was also reasonable. The spikes are on the blunt side, but they were big enough that it broke down the meat some, but not enough.
Cleanup — ★★★★
Cleanup was a breeze everywhere but the spiked face of the mallet, which needed some extra work to get cleaned out. I’ve got my eye on the handle where the plastic meets the metal, but it’s otherwise well-designed for cleaning.
Overall — ★★★
The KitchenAid is fine, but no better. It’s best feature is probably the price tag. If it was a little bit better, I’d call it our value pick, but the results just don’t make it up to par.
7. Sportsman SM07492 Meat Tenderizer/Cuber — ★★
The Sportsman is a crank-style tenderizer with an average price tag for this roundup. It’s pretty cheap compared to other crank tenderizers, which can be very expensive.
Ease of Use — ★★★★
The Sportsman clamped to the edge of the table. We put the meat at the top, turned the crank, and this unit blew right through it. The only trouble spot is sizing the input cutlets. They’ve got to be the right size in width and thickness to fit into the machine, and the width is not entirely obvious, since the cutlet expands as it’s crushed.
Control — ★
There is no control whatsoever. You get what the Sportsman is designed to give you, and that’s it. If that’s what you want, great; if not…
Effectiveness — ★★★★
Well, it certainly tenderized the meat. The finished steak was the most tender of the bunch. Downside: the Sportsman pulverized the meat. What came out tasted nothing like steak, just the taste of fried.
Cleanup — ★
Wow, what a nightmare. This thing has a ton of parts, all of them get meat on them, and you can’t take anything out for cleaning, or put it in the dishwasher. With two people teaming up to move the crank around while spraying the rollers, we got it acceptably clean. Maybe.
Overall — ★★
Fundamentally, the Sportsman did a different job than the rest of the tenderizers in this test. If turning a tough piece of meat into something that has nothing to do with its original flavor is what you want, this thing will do it. Anything else, and you should grab something different.
8. Spring Chef Meat Tenderizer — ★★
The Spring Chef Meat Tenderizer is a hammer-style tool with a flat side and a spiked side. This was one of the inexpensive units in our roundup.
Ease of Use — ★★/★★★
The handle is comfortable and easy to grip, but that’s its only really strong feature. The whole mallet is pretty light, so all of the effect comes from your swing. Using the flat pounder side required some serious wailing on the chicken breasts to get anything done. The spikes are quite pointy, but not particularly prominent. They did a good job of penetrating the meat, but we ran into a problem when the spikes started to fill with meat. They lost effectiveness and had to be cleaned out for this mallet to work.
Control — ★★★★/★★★★
The light weight of the mallet helped a lot with control. I could plant this thing exactly where I wanted it, with the only issue being the inability to get a really heavy blow down.
Effectiveness — ★★/★★★★
We ran into an issue on the flat side with the design of the edges. The shape of the mallet is a square with rounded off corners, and the edges are a little too steep. When pounding with the flat side the near edge would dig into the meat and tear it instead of pulling smoothly with the face. Add the Spring Chef’s light weight, and the result was an unsatisfactory piece of chicken. On the spiked side, we got a pretty tender piece of beef. The sharp spikes effectively broke up the muscle fibers.
Cleanup — ★
Ooh, this one is a problem for cleanup. The first issue is the aforementioned meat filling up the spikes. That took a lot of scrubbing to get the spiked face clean. The potentially bigger problem is the design where the head meets the handle. There’s a plastic cover over an aluminum head, and the interface between all of the bits is a virtually uncleanable mess of crevices. You’ve got to really work a rag into all of those difficult spots every time you use it.
Overall — ★★
The Spring Chef Meat Tenderizer is a mixed bag. It’s pretty good as a spiked mallet, but pretty bad as a flat pounder. Throw in the cleaning problems, and it’s not worth the trouble of keeping around, even if it is cheap.
9. OXO Good Grips Meat Tenderizer #11285000 — ★
The OXO Good Grips Meat Tenderizer is a hammer-style tenderizer with a spiked side and a flat side. This was one of the cheapest unit in our trial.
Ease of Use — ★★★/★
Like pretty much all the OXO products, this one has a good handle with a sure grip. Unfortunately, that’s it. It’s got a weird angled head that is really hard to use. Come down squarely and only the near edge hits, which tears the meat up. You’ve got to get your hand way up and overrotate into the meat to get a clean strike. Once you actually get a good blow down, though, it works. There’s enough weight to do the job. The spiked side is no good at all. Along with the angle problem, the tiny teeth do nothing except get filled up with meat.
Control — ★/★
Like I said in the previous paragraph, you’ve got to get your hand way up and overrotate into the meat to get a clean strike. That angled head makes it as difficult as possible to put a pound where and how you want it.
Effectiveness — ★/★
After all that, is it a surprise to say it didn’t work? The chicken was torn and not well flattened; the beef was not at all tender.
Cleanup — ★★★★
Cleanup, at least, was easy. Aside from a little trouble getting the meat out of the spiked slightly pointy side, it washed up great. The design is good for cleaning too, with no weird spots that need extra effort.
Overall — ★
I’m generally inclined to like OXO, but they got it all wrong here. Don’t get this meat tenderizer.
So, What’s the Best Tenderizer?
After eating entirely too much meat, we’re left with a mixed slate of recommendations.
The best flat pounder is the Norpro #6211 Meat Pounder, which produced a first-rate chicken breast easily.
The best spiked tenderizer is either the OXO Good Grips Bladed Meat Tenderizer or the Jaccard Original Super Meat Tenderizer. Both made a great country-fried steak with ease.
I’d like to recommend a combination unit, since there are a lot of them out there, but none quite measured up. If money is no object and you really want a single unit, the Leifheit is very good, but too expensive. I can’t recommend a value pick either. Our winners are moderately priced and substantially better than the cheap mallets.
One last thing. We can eat rare steaks without worrying too much about foodborne illness because dangerous bacteria start on the outside of the meat and work their way inward. Searing the steak kills those bacteria, while the interior doesn’t need it. If you use a spiked tenderizer, especially a crank or needle tenderizer that really penetrates the meat, this plan doesn’t work. The blades push bits of the meat’s exterior into the interior, leaving potentially dangerous pockets of bacteria hidden below the surface. You need to cook mechanically tenderized meat up to 160° to stay safe, so be careful.
Pick up one or both of our winners. They’re your ticket to banging out an easy, delicious dinner in no time flat.
Alternative ways to tenderize meat
=> Salt it – Keeping the tough cut meat in salt for 12 – 24 hours can break down the muscle fibers in the meat. All you have to do is, rinse the meat kept in salt, dry it, and cook. This is considered dry brining meat which also helps to keep it from drying out when cooking or grilling.
=> Slow- cooking – Cooking tough cut meat with low-temperature heat over a duration of time tenderize the meat. Connective tissues, tough fibers, collagen all break down at prolonged cooking. For best results, consider using a slow cooker, dutch oven or smoker.
