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."

Comments

Oleic acid.

[FooAtWFU]

It's what's for dinner. Tonight.

Re:Oleic acid.

[DrMrLordX]

Seriously. Oleic acid marinades may be the next big thing if they aren't already.

Yay

[plague911]

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

Re:Yay

[davester666]

Yes. Now they will develop a method to inject this fat throughout all cuts of meat, so any test would indicate all the meat at the grocery store is 'best'....

Re:Yay

[timeOday]

Seriously, I would love some objective metrics for tastiness. I feel meat and vegetables have been selected for all the wrong things - resistance to herbicides, vibrant color, durability during shipping - because these are what consumers can see through the shinkwrap at the store. If we could put a number on how "zesty" tomatoes taste, then there would be an incentive to sell tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.

Marbling good. Greasy bad

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[obarthelemy]

It is great fun to eat steak tartare or carpaccio with americans or english people at the table. their faces get actually bluer than the meat !

In my experience, there seems to be a correlation between tender, juicy, and good. there must be a cause for all 3 to be linked... I'm happy if we can pinpoint it, though leery of the ensuing artificial manipulation we can trust meat producers to engage in.

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[Hurricane78]

Duration is next to irrelevant by the way. Temperature is the only important thing. You can leave a steak in the oven at 50-60 degrees Celsius for 12 hours, and it will still be perfect!

Or an egg. Try 55 degrees Celsius for a perfect egg. The time does not matter. It’s the lowest temperature that the protein (in fact only a part of it, just like you like it) does coagulate at.

Slow cooking is the new trend for the best cooks in the world. (Well actually it’s not that new anymore.)

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[DerekLyons]

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.

It's sounds more like what you've had is Japanese beef that's been ill prepared. The heavily marbled Japanese beef is meant to be served thinly sliced rather that en slab as is American/European beef.
 

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.

An interesting claim considering that the marbling levels in American beef have been dropping for decades in response to customer demand for lower fat meats.
 
Even worse is American pork! I literally cannot cook from a 1970's cookbook without heavily modifying the preparation process and cooking times because there has been such a drop in fat levels and the pieces are so closely trimmed. This is why brining has become so popular, to replace the natural moisture and juices that have been bred/trimmed out of the meat.
 
I suspect the [American] fascination with Japanese beef comes from changes in our grading standards. Much of the beef graded Prime (top tier) today would have barely been Choice (second tier) forty or fifty years ago as beef is being bred for lower fat and slaughtered ever younger.

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[DerekLyons]

Duration is next to irrelevant by the way. Temperature is the only important thing. You can leave a steak in the oven at 50-60 degrees Celsius for 12 hours, and it will still be perfect!

Other than the fact that you are flirting with the upper edge of the 'danger zone' (that range of temperatures at which bacteria grow fastest), sure. You're also flirting with meat that will be extremely dry even though it appears to be in the 'medium' range, as those temperatures are sufficient for the water in the meat to depart, but insufficient to melt the fats and collagen/connective tissue.
 

Slow cooking is the new trend for the best cooks in the world. (Well actually it's not that new anymore.)

It sounds like you are talking about sous vide, which isn't slow cooking but is cooking at the intended final temperature until the meat reaches that temperature. (Slow cooking isn't actually a professional culinary term, though colloquial use is roughly analogous to what is professionally known as braising and is done at 80-100 degrees.)

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[mrmeval]

The bacterial steak recipe sounds like some ant-meatist trying to kill stupid people. I salute them for trying to get the stupid out of our collective gene pool.

Maayte Maayte Maayte it's Whot we want to aayte.

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[Dahamma]

Duration might be irrelevant in cooking a steak if your goal is to get it to a specific temperature, rather than actually make it taste good.

For many people (who enjoy steaks at least), the perfect steak is a slight char on the outside (which helps seal in the interior juices and serves to kill any bacteria) and fairly rare and juicy on the inside, just enough to melt the fats but not let them all drain out. This is best done by high heat for a short period, ie it's pretty hard to do when you cook the entire thing to the same tepid degree over a long time.

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[Huntr]

To go even further, it's not necessarily WHERE the beef is from, but what they eat while they're there. Beef from Argentina is more likely to be grass-fed than corn-fed, as is common in the US (although more Argentinian ranchers are turning to feed lots and corn because of money issues). Grass-fed beef has a lot of advantages, but economy of scale isn't one of them.

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[uncqual]

Even worse is American pork! ... because there has been such a drop in fat levels and the pieces are so closely trimmed.

Agreed.

Back in the 70's, I loved pork (roast, chops, anything) and even Mom's guiding principle of "Anything worth cooking is worth overcooking" left Porky the Supermarket Pig quite tasty. Indeed, pork was probably my favorite meat (a juicy pork roast - yum, yum).

Now, I rarely eat pork -- Porky the Skinny Supermarket Pig is nearly tasteless and one has to "do something" with it other than just toss it in the oven or on the grill to make it tasty -- and even then it doesn't have that nice flavor I remember because it tastes like whatever it was seasoned with, coated with, marinated in, or stuffed with.

I wish the hog and pig farming industry would figure out that there are some of us who eat fatty stuff because we like it, don't have cholesterol problems, work out, and limit our caloric intake -- and want "good pork" rather than "skinny tasteless pork". Perhaps introduce a "choice" vs. "prime" type of grading system for pork - "prime" beef costs a bit more but is widely available and much better -- why not the same for pork? Until the pork agribusiness figures this out, they won't get much of my business.

(I was so thrilled when my local CostCo started routinely having a couple of cuts of prime stakes at about $11/lb -- there's better steaks out there, but these are a great price performer).

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[TempeTerra]

Searing your steak doesn't actually 'seal' anything in, it just caramelises the outside.Random Google cite. It does still make your steak tastier just like everyone believes, so who cares about the details?

Re: bacteria, not too much of a problem with beef. Chicken and pork tend to be covered in salmonella which is bad news if you don't cook it properly, but beef bacteria are relatively benign and aging beef (see: growing bacteria) is a common way to develop its flavour. I don't know if it's common practice in the USA though, it sounds like something the FDA would have strong words about.

From talking to chefs and chemists, beef is just getting better as it goes grey and slightly smelly but once it goes green or shiny you're looking at trouble. The bacteria start to break down the proteins in the meat the same way a marinade does. Yes, I deliberately keep steak until after its 'use by' date; no, I've never got food poisoning from it; no, I'm not brave enough to serve it to guests ;)

Disclaimer: double check your facts before eating mouldy cow

Re:Marbling good. Greasy bad

[TempeTerra]

I'm just guessing here, but your problem might not be low fat content in the pork. Factory farmed animals tend to be pumped full of growth hormones which will make them mature fast and put on weight at the expense of tasting like... anything, really. I don't know how it works in America, but if you have farmers markets or some other access to a more rustic style of pig you might get a better meal and support your local food producers too.

Re:Go Vegan

[FooAtWFU]

We'd go on a vegan diet, but the delivery time from Vega is too long.

And then what?

[FlyByPC]

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.

Re:Go Vegan

[Opportunist]

I'd consider it unfair to take away the food of my food.

not to be a grammar nazi...

[arielCo]

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.

Re:not to be a grammar nazi...

[oldhack]

Stupid grammar nazi.

Re:not to be a grammar nazi...

[Petrushka]

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.

"Try and" is in fact the older expression, and is closer to the core meaning of "try". Here's the earliest usage --

They try and express their love to God by their thankfulness to him. -- J. Sergeant, 1686

"Try" taking an infinitive only goes back to a 1697 poem of Dryden's (though there's a cognate usage of "trial" that goes back to 1683).

Age isn't the main indicator of which is better, of course. The point is that once upon a time "try" didn't mean "attempt"; that's a secondary meaning that it was gaining in the late 17th century. The original meaning, which it still has, is "test, prove, experiment", as in "Try before you buy", or "I shall try this infrared camera technology and, I hope, thereby determine the tastiest slices of beef".

In that sense "try and" makes considerably more sense than "try to": the implication of "try and determine" is that two intents are behind the one action, i.e. "I will conduct an experiment" and also "I shall (I hope!) determine". It's not actually being used as a modal verb, in other words.

The short answer is: you're fighting the losing side of a 300-year-old battle, and isn't it fun what you can find when you actually take the time to look in a dictionary?

Re:not to be a grammar nazi...

[arielCo]

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.

"Try and" is in fact the older expression, and is closer to the core meaning of "try". Here's the earliest usage --

They try and express their love to God by their thankfulness to him. -- J. Sergeant, 1686

"Try" taking an infinitive only goes back to a 1697 poem of Dryden's (though there's a cognate usage of "trial" that goes back to 1683).

Age isn't the main indicator of which is better, of course...

Yes - I have this silly tendency to think that if it "parses" better it must be better. To me, the preposition + infinitive means try(action) while the conjunction + simple form means try();action, where the action is the implied object (argument) of try(). But then again, natural languages don't always make sense. My native tongue is Spanish, which is a shining example with its double negation.

The point is that once upon a time "try" didn't mean "attempt"; that's a secondary meaning that it was gaining in the late 17th century. The original meaning, which it still has, is "test, prove, experiment", as in "Try before you buy", or "I shall try this infrared camera technology and, I hope, thereby determine the tastiest slices of beef".

Thanks for the info. Fun thing, I have been schooled and I my opinion (about what we should be using now) stays valid ;)

In that sense "try and" makes considerably more sense than "try to": the implication of "try and determine" is that two intents are behind the one action, i.e. "I will conduct an experiment" and also "I shall (I hope!) determine". It's not actually being used as a modal verb, in other words.

Correct, if you assume the "hopefully" clause in the middle is implicit.

The short answer is: you're fighting the losing side of a 300-year-old battle,

*sigh* And yet, I will not go gentle ;)

and isn't it fun what you can find when you actually take the time to look in a dictionary?

Hmm... good old m-w.com says nothing beyond "to make an attempt at — often used with an infinitive <try to fix the car>". Then I went to dictionary.com and found:

Usage note:
10. "Try" followed by and instead of to has been in standard use since the 17th century: The Justice Department has decided to try and regulate jury-selection practices. The construction occurs only with the base form "try", not with "tries" or "tried" or "trying". Although some believe that "try and" is less formal than "try to", both patterns occur in all types of speech and writing.

... which somehow contradicts your information. Funny things, these human languages.

Silly scientists. ^^

[Hurricane78]

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!

Re:Silly scientists. ^^

[DerekLyons]

The right way goes like this

The 'right way' depends entirely on the cut of beef and the intended final product. A chuck is treated differently from the round which is treated differently from the sirloin. Roasting produces one result (depending on the cut you are using), braising a different result, browning yet another... etc. etc.
 

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.

It sounds like you are making a roast of some kind... (but I can't really tell as you've failed to specify the cut and intended final product), but you've badly botched the chemistry. The reason the meat appears to have 'lost' no juice is that you haven't produced any in the first place. The primary source of 'juice' isn't the water you expend so much effort in not losing, but is the collagen and other connective tissue in the roast, which doesn't start to melt until roughly 82 degrees. (Which is why a sirloin roast, high in fat but low in connective tissue, can be dry roasted and served rare, but chuck roasts which are filled with connective tissue are braised and always served well done.)
 
Further, you're cooking cycle [near freeze - browning - cooking at too low a temperature] is a method precisely designed to produce an outer layer of meat that is overcooked with the bulk of the interior badly undercooked.
 
 

Enjoy your 5/kg meat which tastes like >10/kg meat!

I can't think of a single cut of beef that would be 'improved' by your faulty method. From your description it sounds like you are covering the faults in your cooking method with store bought flavor additives rather than not inducing the fault in the first place.

MMmm. Nitrate/ites/monoxides

[Colin Smith]

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.