Cooking of meat: effect on texture, cooking loss and microbiological quality – a review

Abstract

Cooking can positively affect meat tenderness, on the other hand, the heat treatment also causes weight loss. The resulting tenderness of cooked meat is influenced by the background toughness of fresh meat, by the post mortem ageing process and by the method of cooking. In the case of heat treatment, the temperature and duration of action play a key role. In this respect, the meat tenderness depends on the type of appliance used for cooking. The cooking loss of meat during heat treatment is caused by contraction of muscle fibres and intramuscular connective tissue, the intensity of which also depends on the temperature and device used. The extent of this contraction increases with increasing temperature. Cooking of meat is considered the most effective way of eliminating microorganisms causing food-borne diseases. The recommended combination of temperature and time of 70 °C for 2 min reduces the number of Listeria monocytogenes bacteria by more than 6 log. This temperature is not, however, always attained with the use of many meat cooking methods, such as grilling or frying. This presents the risk of survival of food-borne agents. The latest knowledge indicates that, in the case of cross contamination, the population of food-borne agents is of the order of 1–2 log CFU/cm2 or g. If they do not multiply as a result of a higher environmental temperature, the population of pathogenic bacteria present is then reliably eliminated during adequate cooking, either entirely or to an amount that does not suffice to induce illness.

Beetle Diversity and Distribution at Lower Altitudinal Montane Ecosystems in Peninsular Malaysia

“…The control samples of this study exhibited the significantly highest (p<0.05) cook losses (CL), followed by T1 (Fig. 3b), which occurred due to the denaturation, gelation and subsequent contraction of muscle fibers upon exposure to high temperature (Ježek et al, 2020). The heat-induced structural changes of the meat proteins in the T0 samples were instigated by the expulsion of the free water held by capillary forces from the threedimensional protein matrix during muscle fiber shrinkage, which led to the reduction of weight and volume of the meat (Barbera, 2019).…”

Detecting cooking state of grilled chicken by electronic nose and computer vision techniques

“…Accounting for that, the major variables to determine the doneness should be cooking temperature, time, and heating method (Aaslyng et al, 2003;Unklesbay et al, 1988) that all determine such characteristics as juiciness, tenderness, color, and flavor (Choi et al, 2016). At high temperatures, typical of grilling, the observed heavy water loss is expected to be negatively correlated with juiciness (Aaslyng et al, 2003) and have a great influence on its tenderness (Ježek et al, 2019).…”

Evaluation of the Relationship between Freezing Rate and Quality Characteristics to Establish a New Standard for the Rapid Freezing of Pork

“…In a comparison among freezing treatments, the pattern of cooking loss also showed linearity with the freezing rate. However, the regression model of cooking loss showed less of a relationship with freezing rate (r 2 =0.62) than that of thawing loss (r 2 =0.75) because cooking loss of meat was affected not only by freezing conditions but also by cooking conditions (Ježek et al, 2019). However, cooking loss was closely correlated with juiciness, which was an important indicator to predict the chewiness and mouthfeel of meat (Aaslyng et al, 2003).…”