UNIT 4.1 FPL

• Types of Meats


  • Beef
  • Veal
  • Lamb and Mutton
  • Pork
• Beef


  • Male cattle that are castrated while young so that they will gain weight quickly
  • Older uncastrated males that provide stag meat are use for breeding and later for processed meats and pet foods
  • Meat from cows, female cattle that have borne calves is less desirable than that from steers or heifers
  • Calves 3 to 8 months old are too old for veal and too young for beef; meat at 8 and 12 months are referred as baby beef
• Veal


  • Comes from the young calves of beef cattle between the ages of 3 weeks and 3 months
  • Fed with a milk-based diet or formula and have their movements greatly restricted, resulting in meat with an exceptionally milk flavor, pale color, and tender texture
  • Free-range veal – the meat from calves that are allow to roam in a pasture and is slightly less tender
• Lamb and Mutton


  • They are the meat of sheep
  • Lamb comes from sheep less than 14 months old
  • Mutton from those over 14 months
  • Lamb's lower leg breaks off above the joint, while mutton will break in the joint
  • Mutton is darker and tougher than lamb and has a stronger flavor

  
• Pork


  • Derived from young swine slaughtered between 5 and 7 months of age
  • Pigs are less than 4 months old
  • Hogs are older than 4 months
  • Pork has been bred to be leaner and more tender
  • 1/3 is sold fresh and some are cured (i.e., ham, sausage, luncheon meats, and bacon)
  • Salt pork and fat back are cuts of fatty tissue that are used as flavoring agents

  
• Composition of Meats


  • Muscle
  • Connective Tissue
  • Adipose Tissue
  • Bone

  
• Muscle Tissue


  • Where most of the protein in animals are found, making them as the main sources of dietary meat
  • Its characteristics are an important consideration in deciding how the resulting meat should be prepared
  • Made up of a collection of individual muscle cells called muscle fibers, that are surrounded by an outer membrane called the sarcolemma
  • Each muscle fiber is filled with cell fluid (sarcoplasm)
  • There are about 2,000 smaller muscle fibrils serving as the contractile components of the muscle fiber
  • If the muscle fibrils are small, the result is finer muscle bundles, which give the meat a very delicate, velvety consistency

  
• Connective Tissue


  • Part of ligaments and tendons
  • Acts as the "glue" that holds muscle cells together
  • Composed primarily of a mixture of proteins and mucopolysaccharides
  • Collagen – the most abundant protein; tough and fibrous, but converts to a gel when exposed to moist heat
  • Elastin – has elastic qualities
  • Reticulin – consists of very small fibers of connective tissue that form a delicate interlace around muscle cells

  
• Cuts high in connective tissue


  Are naturally tough and need to be properly prepared in order to become more tender
• Muscles used for movements (i.e., neck, shoulders, legs, and flank)

  Contain more collagen and tend to be tougher than muscles from the loin, or lower back, and rib areas, which get less exercise
• Collagen concentration


  Increases as animals age, which is why meat from older animals is tougher
• Tougher cuts


  Require slow, moist heating at low temperatures to convert, or hydrolyze, the tough connective tissue to softer gelatin
• Tougher cuts have more flavor than the more tender ones
• Elastin


  • Yellowish, rubbery, and often referred to as silver skin
  • Does not soften with heating, so it should be removed before preparation if possible
  • There is very little elastin in meats, except in cuts from the neck and shoulder, so it is less likely to affect tenderness
• Adipose Tissue


  • Serves as insulation under the skin (subcutaneous) and as padding in the abdominal cavity for sensitive internal organs
  • Cover fat – if the fat appears on the outside of the meat
  • It helps retain the moisture of meats, but this separable fat is often trimmed from meats
  • Intramuscular or marbling – fat found within muscles

  
• Animal's age, diet, and species


  Affect the color and texture of fat
• Feeding-lot practices that provide swine with fats that are primarily saturated will yield pork fat that is more saturated and hard
• Including more polyunsaturated fatty acids in the animal's diet will make its fat softer
• The species and breed of the animal also influence the softness of fat; beef fat is very different from the hard, more brittle and dense fat observed in lamb
• Bone


  • Used as landmarks for identifying the various meat cuts from a carcass
  • Bone weighs more than meat and that the higher the proportion of bone there is to meat, the less meat yield and the more the cost of the edible portion will be

  
• Bone Marrow


  • A soft, fatty material in the center of most large bones
  • Yellow marrow – found in the long bones
  • Red marrow – it is supplied with many blood vessels
  • A valued food many cultures and can provide much of the flavor in soups
• 20 million pounds of antibiotics are given to animals raised for meat to shield them from disease and promote growth
• Regulations require that the drugs be withheld prior to slaughter so that any remaining residues fall below federal limits
• WHO recommended to phase out the use of antibiotic growth promoters in order to preserve the effectiveness of medicinal antibiotics
• Hormones


  • Natural hormones – testosterone, progesterone, and estradiol
  • Synthetic hormones – trenbolone acetate, melengestrol, zeranol
• Not all countries permit the use of hormones in livestock to encourage rapid weight gain, help them reach market weight sooner, and reduce the production cost
• The higher the concentration of myoglobin in raw meat


  The more intense is its bright red color

  
• Heavily exercised muscle


  Has a higher demand for oxygen, so it is higher in myoglobin and redder than less exercised muscles
• Red color


  Increases as the animal ages and varies from species to species
• Myoglobin within the meat

  Purplish red, but once exposed to oxygen, it becomes bright red – a color indicating freshness
• Meats left in storage may be exposed to bacteria or less oxygen and kept under fluorescent or incandescent lights to turn the meat brownish-red

  
• Using plastic wrap that is permeable to oxygen allows meat retailers to maintain the bright red color for a longer period of time, whereas vacuum wrap, which eliminates the oxygen, causes the meat to appear purplish-red
• Cooking meat initially


  Converts the color of raw meat to bright red, but then, the denaturing of the pigment-containing proteins yields the classic color of well-done meat – grayish brown

  
• Storing cooked meat too long causes the denatured protein to further break down, causing the meat to turn yellow, green, or faded
• Extractives


  • Flavor compounds consisting of non-protein, nitrogen substances that are end-products of protein metabolism
  • Creatine, creatinine, urea, and uric acid
  • Meat from older animals contains more connective tissue and extractives yielding more flavor
  • They are water soluble and may be lost during cooking