I spent Christmas eve at our home with my balikbayan brother and his family. They came for a holiday visit and an anniversary wedding for my sister-in-law’s parents. Escaping cold Chicago, they took advantage of our beaches in Palawan, Bohol and Cebu just narrowly missing typhoon Pablo before they came back to Manila.

As with recent Christmas get-togethers at home, I decided to cook beef stew as my “contribution” to the festivities. It would have been easier to just buy prepared mix packets and stir it in with the beef but that would defeat the purpose of cooking it from scratch.

One of the toughest problems in cooking meat is that it could turn out to be tough and rubbery. My recollections of a good Korean beef stew lies on how easily the meat and the sinews separate from the bone and melts (with all those fat) in your mouth.

Looking up on how to make meat tender would deluge you with information that is hard to sort out especially if you are on a deadline for Noche Buena. It turns out that meat is tough due to the collagen that is in muscle. Collagen typically accounts for any where from one to six percent of muscle depending where it is sourced from. Strong muscles are in the upper limit which makes these muscles very tough.

Collagen is strong but just like any other protein, it will break down (denature) with heat given sufficient time. There are other muscle proteins such as myosin and actin that are important to keep in mind since they also affect the taste and texture of your dish. Too much heat (at a range of 66-73 degrees Celsius or above) causes meat to be dry. This is due to the denatured actin squeezing out liquids inside the muscle. Myosin denatures at 50-60 degrees Celsius while collagen breaks down at around 56-62 degrees.

What is the significance of all of these numbers? It turns out that having soft, juicy meat is not just having to pour more water into the broth, it is also maintaining the temperature at the right level (of around 60-66 degrees Celsius) in order to break down myosin and collagen and let actin be. Translated into ordinary cooking language, a slow fire (not boiling) under your meats would ensure a good stew. You cannot rush things by putting in more heat as it will cause chemical transformations in your meat that will make it taste different. In Tagalog, kapag may tiyaga, may nilaga.

Now with a solid basis in science and in folk sayings, I put theory into practice. I used our kalan outside with some firewood collected from a fallen branch of the mango tree to build up a fire. I left the beef stew on for a few hours. The kalan is efficient enough to keep in the heat from three sides. My pot is large enough to cover the top so that the only open area is where I put in the firewood. With energy loss at a minimum, I just added a piece or two of wood to keep the coals burning. After a few hours of protein denaturation and chemical magic from the ingredients, I served Korean beef stew to my family’s delight (or so I think).

During Christmas gift giving, my brother gave each of his daughters an interactive doll. You can speak with it, rub its stomach, pull its tail and its LCD eyes will blink, close, open or even shed a tear. It talks back to you, makes mewing sounds, moves around and even converses with other dolls that are near. There is even an app where you can “feed” it with your choice of virtual food.

The doll interacts with its owners through different sensors and actuators. It mainly detects sound through a microphone. My brother figured this out quickly by noticing how the doll “listens” to the tablet swish when his daughter “feeds” the doll. It can sense its tail being pulled with a switch and its tummy being rubbed with embedded sensors in the skin. It gives it feedback with its large round eyes and makes sounds depending on the action. It learns the user’s personality and adapts to it.

The toy is a classic example of an embedded computer that is hidden behind the purple and yellow fur of the doll. It gives an illusion of having a pet which one can take care of to teach kids responsibility while having fun.

Just probably like most of you, I cannot escape technology or science even during the holiday break. It is inside the toys we give, the phones we use and even in the cooking that we do. Yet as ubiquitous it may seem, there are a lot of simple technologies that are available that can be of use to many of our people but it is the present social realities and relations that prevent them from using these to their benefit.

Dr. Tapang is the chairperson of AGHAM-Advocates of Science and Technology for the People.