Fork-Tender

Fork-tender refers to cooking food sufficiently to tenderize it to the point where a fork can easily penetrate.  In cooked meat, as in braises, stews or roasting, fork-tender refers to meat that shreds or pulls apart easily.  Meat that has been cooked past the point of fork-tender (“falling off the bone…”) may be very tender but dry because all of the connective tissue has been dissolved into gelatin and allowed to leach out of the meat.