That's a thing of beauty.

Soft melt in your mouth, meat and thick, gorgeous gravy.

Perfect casserole.

But when I try and make this at home, it just doesn't cut the mustard in science.

Tell me what I'm doing wrong and help me get it right In search of tips to ensure my casseroles or more hits than Miss, I'm heading to London Metropolitan University to be a food scientist.

Dr Sue Bailey T.

So, can you teach me the art of making the perfect casserole?

I'd be delighted to first choose the correct cut of meat.

What is the best cut of meat for Castle?

Well, the best cutter meet actually is the cheaper cuts of me.

That's good news is very good news.

Yes, I was something like this, for example, which is brisket.

So where is the brisket foam?

It's from part of the shoulder off the animals, Quite muscly, So quite muscly.

So anything that's being working very hard and has got a lot of connective tissue in it.

Why do you want connective tissue?

That just doesn't sound yummy.

Well, connective tissue when you cook, it breaks down and then makes you a nice thick casserole.

That is so interesting because in the past I've got rid of these bits because they just don't look very tasty.

Next up, brown the meat.

In order to actually get a really well flavored casserole, you must brown your meat.

Now, a lot of people think that's too so searing.

Seal the outside of the meat.

Yes.

Blocking the due to lock in the juices.

Well, actually, no, that's not what it's there for.

What you actually need to do is start off a reaction called the my yard Reaction got a small amount off sugars in the meat, reacting with protein in the meat on, then creating a whole load of you Taste molecules.

Rule three.

At the correct amount of stock, you need thio add enough water to just cover the meat.

It would dry out otherwise, yeah, that's about right.

Now choose the right dish.

What is most important is that you have a lit so it doesn't really matter what you use as long as there is a lid on it fits tightly.

What you want is no steam to escape during the cooking process.

You want to retain a ll flavors in your casserole dish, finally or important cooking time.

Now I've always believed cooking for longer equals a better casserole, and this time, instead of telling me what's best, Dr Seuss devised an experiment so we can measure.

The difference is accurately.

We're cooking three identical casseroles, all at a relatively low temperature.

Check the temperature.

Okay, so it's a 140.

Perfect one will be cooked for an hour and 1/2 one for four hours and one for eight hours, which will come out best.

You have to get to this sort of magic zone within a casserole on.

That is where you get the connective tissue beginning to break down, turning into gelatin and then giving a really nice mouth feel.

Okay, that looks very good.

Smells amazing way.

Take the meat to the lab for scientific testing.

A compression test is done with a texture analyzer, which measures the meat tenderness.

Vacuum oven analyzes moisture content now the moment of truth.

So this is the 90 minutes, so that's 58% moisture.

This is the four R's cooking time with 61% moisture, so you can see that the moisture level has gone up.

But in fact, for the eight our cook, it's gone down quite a lot.

It's clear that our four hour casserole has the most moisture, meaning it's the most succulent on the four hour bake also results in the most tender meat.

Why does cooking time affect the meat so much?

What's actually happened in the castle it's only being cooked for an hour and 1/2 is that there's not enough time for the connective tissue to break down into the lovely, silky gelatin in there because you can see it's still very hard.

This one, however, has been cooked for eight hours.

There's not much gravy.

Everything is quite burn.

What you've had here is the secondary break down off the proteins.

The muscle fibers have actually broken apart.

I've always thought the longer you cook a casserole for the better and better it gets.

No, that's not true, said this.

One that was cooked for four hours is pretty much perfect.

The meat falls apart really easily.

The flavor is delicious.

The vegetables are still intact.

I mean, it's bang on exactly.

They say that you can't rush a good casserole, but it turns out longer isn't always better.