Handbook of Meat Processing

Curing 129

This water release is called cooking loss

or cookout if fat is also released in fat -

containing meat. Table 6.2 shows that when

a lean meat (pork < 2% fat) is cooked, it loses

28% of its weight as cooking loss or 37.5%

of the water in the meat (Table 6.2 , A). Let

us call this the “ reference cooking loss. ”

Mincing, without any further addition,

reduces the cooking loss by a few percent due

to the more open structure of the minced

meat (Table 6.2 , A to B).

Mixing salt into the minced meat (B to C)

improves its water - holding capacity consid-

erably (only 6% cooking loss). As can be

expected, the addition of water (B to D),

as is common in “ emulsion type ” sausages,

enhances the cooking loss dramatically to

heating

salt

heating

e.g. amino acid compositon of myosin

hydrophilic amino acids:

lipophilic or hydrophobic

amino acids:

Three dimensional schematic structure of a native

protein (bold parts are lipophilic amino acid side

chains, line parts are hydrophilic side chains.The

surrounding environment is water or aqueous salt

solution

66%

34%

Figure 6.7. The effect of heating and salt on meat proteins.

Table 6.1. Cooking loss of lean beef in cubes
of meat of about 100 – 120 g (75% water at p H
5.5) with a heating velocity of 2.5 ° C/min from
7 ° C to the temperatures indicated and kept
there for 40 min

% cooking loss

20 ° C 0

30 ° C 0

40 ° C 2

50 ° C 6

55 ° C 9

60 ° C 13

65 ° C 18

70 ° C 23

75 ° C 28

80 ° C 33

90 ° C 41

100 ° C 45