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

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

[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

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...

[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: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.

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.