Relationship between Meat Swelling, Viscosity, Extract‐release Volume, and Water‐holding Capacity in Evaluating Beef Microbiol Quality

Abstract

SUMMARY: This research was undertaken in order to determine the relationship between the phenomena of meat swelling (SW), viscosity (η), extract‐release volume (ERV), and wafer‐holding capacity (WHC) as simple and rapid techniques of determining beef microbiol qualify. These techniques were compared by analyzing beef samples held from freshness to spoilage at refrigerator temperatures, fresh beef homogenized with urea, and beef adjusted to different pH values. In addition, irradiated fresh ground beef samples were inoculated with the normal flora of spoiled beef and analyzed similarly.With the microbially spoiled meats the highest degree of correlation occurred between SW and ERV, followed by ERV & WHC, SW & η, η & ERV and SW & WHC. These findings indicate that ERV and SW are quite similar and equally reliable in determining meat microbiol qualify while the relationships between η and ERV, and η & WHC were of lower orders of significance.When fresh beef was homogenized with urea at levels between 0.5 and 5M, η correlated best with SW followed by ERV & η, and ERV & SW. Over the pH range 3‐11, SW and ERV correlated best followed rather closely by SW and η, and ERV & η.