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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."
It's what's for dinner. Tonight.
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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.
I'd consider it unfair to take away the food of my food.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.