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Using Infrared Cameras To Find Tastiness of Beef
JoshuaInNippon writes "Might we one day be able to use our cell phone cameras to pick out the best piece of meat on display at the market? Some Japanese researchers seem to hope so. A team of scientists is using infrared camera technology to try and determine the tastiest slices of high-grade Japanese beef. The researchers believe that the levels of Oleic acid found within the beef strongly affect the beef's tenderness, smell, and overall taste. The infrared camera can be tuned to pick out the Oleic acid levels through a whole slab, a process that would be impossible to do with the human eye. While the accuracy is still relatively low — a taste test this month resulted in only 60% of participants preferring beef that was believed to have had a higher level of Oleic acid — the researchers hope to fine tune the process for market testing by next year."
Human being are herbivores. Go vegan!
It's what's for dinner. Tonight.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
This is an example of people using science to the fullest of our ability. Times like this make me proud to be a member of the human race
Having had Japanese beef of all price levels, I can safely say that most of it is overrated and overpriced. It reminds me of the Japanese' impression of American workers, actually.
Good beef should be marbled. This gives it a good tenderness and provides flavor. However Japanese beef is all too often over-marbled leading to a greasy mess that tastes less like beef than a mouthful of fat.
The best beef cows are in the US and have far lower levels of marbling than the famed "Kobe beef". It's not a matter of how coddled the cows are until they are slaughtered, it's all about breeding stock.
So while the Japanese may find a way to rank their beef using IR, they are still stuck with the same old greasy, mushy slabs of fat.
So you prompt the sellers to spray each piece with Oleic acid to make their display look extra-tasty. It needs to be a more sophisticated, hard-to-fool algorithm than that.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
if only we could do that for the opposite gender.
Yes, use an IE thermometer on your cheeks, if they are hot, your capilliarys are dialated, your drunk, and you will regret 'hitting that'
to try and determine
Can we please stop using "try and" when we mean "try to"? Many say it's non-standard in written speech, but it's worse - it means something entirely different. If you "try and determine" (conjunction), you succeed at it and the "try" part is rather redundant. If you "try to determine" (preposition), "to determine" becomes the object of "try".
You can start modding this down now, or making fun if you haven't the points.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
...but what if you tried scanning a live human with this? Might it tell you who the tastiest person in the room is?
From personal experience:
A medium-grade piece of meat, prepared the right way, beats the best meat, prepared the wrong way.
The wrong way, is what most people think is normal.
The right way goes like this:
Think about the actual chemistry.
1. Fat does make it tastier! Marbling is a good thing! (Also if you stuff yourself with pure starch and sugars [including what is called “bread”] it’s not the fat that’s making you fat.)
2. The higher the temperature, the more you wreck the meat. That’s a no-brainer. So the lower, the better. Which takes a really long time, but does not really cost more in energy. The optimal temperature is the lowest one, which still allows protein coagulation, but as little “sweating” / water evaporation as possible. So from 50 to a maximum of 80 degrees celsius. For a big roast, this can easily take from 4 to 12 hours! But remember that at 50 degrees, you could practically leave it in there forever, witout any negative effects.
3. Now of course you get a problem, since this will not lead to much browning. But the browning creates important flavors! So you have to fry it just as much, to get the Maillard reaction to brown enough of the outer crust, for it to be like you want it. And here lies the problem: This overheats the core too, you lose water, and the meat becomes tough as leather. But I found a nice hack, to prevent that: Right before frying, cool the meat as close to the freezing point as possible (but not actually freezing, since the ice crystals are bad). Do it slowly, since you want the core to be cold! Which protects it from the heat.
4. Always first fry, then put it in the oven. Not the other way around. Because else, the cooling method does not work, and you also will not know when to take it out, so that it’s perfect after the following frying. When you can check it in the oven, it’s much easier, because it’s a matter of half an hour to an hour between good and bad. Not a matter of seconds!
So in short:
1. Cool close to freezing point.
2. Fry as short as possible. Always stop, as soon as the core gets over 50-80 degrees Celsius.
3. Put in the oven at those 50-80 degrees. (Buy a oven thermometer, or even better: A roast thermometer with a needle. Because your oven can be off by up to 20 degrees Celsius!)
4. Wait until you think it’s good. This is a matter of experience and temperature. But at 80 degrees, a 2-person roast can take 4 hours. The same one an 55-60 degrees, can take 6-8 hours! Check every half hour. While doing something else (I work from home in parallel.)
5. Notice that it has lost no juice. This is an indicator that you did it right. But since you can’t make any gravy without that juice, you have to use something else. Like that concentrated meat juice & co you can buy in the supermarket. Add a bit whine perhaps, a bit mixed pepper, real butter, spring onions if you like them... you know the drill.
6. Enjoy your 5€/kg meat which tastes like >10€/kg meat! And the feeling of having done cool science/chemistry at the same time!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
just wait till the butchers catch on and charge more for the high Oleic acid level in what we buy
the post right above yours is...unfortunate.
rewriting history since 2109
If you want to find the best tasting beef, buy grassfed beef. It's tastes like beef is supposed to taste. I have about 100 lbs of it sitting in my freezer, and it's tasty.
Bright red meat... damned near glowing with health?
Food chemistry is well understood, as is customer preference. The industry has been using every trick in the book for a thousand years to sell product to customers.
Deleted
As a rancher (and a geek) I've done some research into this, including raising and feeding different breeds of cattle different feeds. The result? All marbling does is add extra fat. If you overcook your meat, the fat keeps it from drying out, and makes it more tender. If you don't overcook your meat, even the leanest cut can be tender and juicy.
As for flavor, yes the flavor is in the fat, but more fat doesn't mean more flavor. What the cow is fed determines the flavor MUCH more than how much intramuscular fat is present. When growing grapes to make wine, grapes often have the best flavor in poor soil. In the same way, grass-fed beef has the best flavor. I've had the best of prime beefs, and it often has all the flavor of tofu, because they feed-lot their carefully raise high-intramuscular-fat breeds on corn. Zero flavor. But a grass fed steer, even with a lot less fat, has much better flavor.
Get grass fed beef, cook it correctly so you don't make it tough, and you'll save money and eat better steak than the richest of Japanese.
Don't just take my word for it. http://www.slate.com/id/2152674/
I'm getting the sense that oleic acid has as much to do with tenderness, smell, and overall taste.
as midichlorines have to do with being a Jedi.
i.e. its a cause/effect issue and if you rely too much on it you'll end up with alot of beef Darth Vaders.
A tender steak cooked can be overcooked at 50-60C. This from the Chef/Owner of the French Laundry, Thomas Keller in his sous vide book Under Pressure.
12 hours would practically ruin the steak. It may still be pink, but it will still be overcooked. I've done it in only 4 hours.
... that all this time I've been using a fork to help me determine the tastiness of beef.
Ohh, I weep at my naivety.
How will this help once everyone has it? Let's assume 1 in 4 are "good". If all the meat was bought, then 1 in 4 people would get good pieces. After everyone has this technology in their phones... 1 in 4 people will get good pieces. I fail to see any net benefit.
"USDA grade-A and iPod Approved!"
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Actually, you aren't wrong by much: stop after step 2 and you're all set. Why can't people just put a nice sear on and leave well enough alone?
I recently visited a beef abatoir (in NSW, Australia) for work. The thing that suprised me most was that the process of "meat grading" was completely automated. A slit was cut between two ribs and exposed to the air for about 20 minutes. Then they just pointed a hand-held scanner device at the exposed meat, and "Grade AAA" or "Grade AA+" etc appeared on a screen.
As a side note to the vegos, I found the on-site vets to be absolutely passionate about animal welfare. The animals were well looked after and quite comfortable and happy until they were electrically stunned. They make a serious effort to make sure the animals experience as little stress as possible - apart from anything else, it spoils the meat.
As I noted in previous post, his duration is far too long. However, it can be quite long compared to normal steak cooking times.
But to get that 'char', or better, a sear, many of us turn to a blowtorch to apply an intense level of heat in a very localized way to keep the inside perfectly cooked while getting a nice maillard reaction on the outside.
Fuck you, chicken! Fuck you, cow!
I'm one of those wacky people who prefers steak well done. Not a hint of pink. Most people object to "ruining" a good steak by "overcooking" it, but after trying the whole spectrum from rare to medium-well steak a number of times and trying to make them an "acquired taste," I've come to the conclusion that I just prefer well done and always will.
I suspect it may be partly genetic, since I've read that the sense of taste is actually quite variable and some people can even taste substances that others cannot (e.g., phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC). To me, a rare or medium steak tastes alright, though aesthetically anything less than medium is displeasingly bloody. But a well-done steak, to me, has a very different and far more pleasing flavor than anything less cooked--even a medium steak with a good char on the outside lacks the sort of high savoriness a well-done steak has for me. Since taste is complex and is both additive and subtractive, it could very well be true that cooking to well-done does destroy some flavors, but that subtracting those other flavors increases my perception of the savoriness (umami) to a level which pleases me far more than the other flavors did. Steak cooked less well just seems to lack the intense savoriness I get from a well-done steak.
For me, the two most pleasing flavors are usually savoriness and saltiness. I not only like my steak very well-done, but with more salt than most people use. I've also found that I like a simple lime juice marinade.
My love for well-done steak does raise eyebrows, but at least I don't commit the sin of ruining great steak with steak sauce...
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
if they succeed, then everyone will agree that their product accurately provides reliable results.
after that happens, in the same way search engine optimizers operate, beef quality optimizers will step in to spray on or radiate out whatever the device is looking for.
fast forward a generation and we're all convinced mcnuggets are the highest quality food.
Also of interest in the same area are developments about food tracking / food safety, partly based on GPS, imaging, barcode/QR technologies & al
JPK
I feel like an ass now. Honestly, I did *not* intend to come across as snarky or sarcastic or touchy at all. I really understood the bit in dictionary.com as similar of what you explained to me but opposite as to which is the newer form, and the whole point (change in usage and the logic behind "try and") is new information to me which I appreciate. I'll read both again to sort it out.
When I said "my opinion stays valid" and "I will not go gentle [into that good night]", it was about the infinitive being somehow better, partly joking, and surely not an attempt to raise an argument about what form was first. I do have a silly tendency to parse natural languages as expressions. But yes, it's easy to read it that way, given that sarcasm and touchiness do abound here in /.
All in all, apologies if my clumsy writing upset you. I wanted to convey that really learned something from you, even if I'm not sure what it is :)
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
...we won't have a planet left if the meat industry continues to rape the planet.
Unless in the near future we all adopt a vegetarian diet then we are doomed!
Besides, what is tasty about a dead animal? Bland and tasteless...
No wonder so many Americans are fat with their obsession with meat and carbohydrates!
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
because of the type of muscle.
It's not all marbling.
I thought the topic was Using Infrared Cameras To Find Tastiness of Beer
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada