Why Does Chicken Cook Faster Than Beef?

Chicken and beef are the most consumed meats today. Both are incredibly versatile and go well with innumerable ingredients. And yet, you will find that most people prefer either and care very little about the other. This shows how different the two are, akin to two different but almost parallel lanes in the culinary realm.

Ready chicken meals are far quicker to prepare than menu items dependent on beef if cooking times are compared. This is why fast food chains focus on chicken meals, and beef cuisines are more commonly seen in slower establishments, with lavish ambiance, seating, and live entertainment to keep guests from feeling the long waiting times associated with cooking beef.

But why exactly does chicken cook faster than beef?

The answer is technical but simple to understand. Birds and small animals have evolved over millennia to have bodies built for speed to escape predators. For this reason, they have thinner layers of muscle and finer muscle fibers that contract and relax rapidly whenever needed and add minimal weight to the animal's body as a whole.

Chicken is one such animal. Even though chickens are not very fast, they have the ideal meat quantity and toughness balance.

On the contrary, evolution has taken larger animals on a path focusing on strength rather than speed. Their muscle anatomy is designed to contract, producing great push and pull forces, regardless of how much body weight is produced due to this structuring.

This is especially true for domesticated herbivores like cattle, which humans have protected for many centuries, and do not have to rely on natural, bodily defenses against predators. Due to this reduced need to focus on survival, cattle also developed increased body fats from the lack of exercise and activity to protect them from the external cold.

The thinner muscle layers, like those of chickens, are more permeable to heat and other kitchen ingredients, meaning it takes little time to prepare chicken meals. In comparison, tougher meat from large animals like cows and bulls is denser and tougher, resisting heat and any ingredients you add and taking longer to be ready to serve.

Marinating is the way to go if you’re looking for a workaround for a shorter cooking time for beef or any other meat!

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