Can You Dye Ground Beef if You Are Licensed

While many people love a skillful rare steak, others (ahem, Donald Trump) have a fear ― or at to the lowest degree concerns ― about eating meat that looks "bloody." But before you plow downwards that juicy rare steak, it's worth taking a moment to acquire about why it isn't going to hurt you.

As it turns out, that "blood" in your steak isn't blood at all.

It's myoglobin, the protein that delivers oxygen to an animal's muscles. This protein turns reddish when meat is cut, or exposed to air. Heating the protein turns it a darker color. Rare meat isn't "bloody," information technology is just cooked to a lower temperature.

There's a reason some meats are darker than others.

Myoglobin delivers oxygen to muscle tissues. Animals with more active muscle tissues, as well as older animals, both have meat with more myoglobin, Jeffrey Savell, a distinguished professor of Meat Science at Texas A&G University, told HuffPost.

That's why veal, which is the meat from a baby calf, is much lighter in colour than steak from a full-grown cow ― its muscles haven't been activated every bit much equally the older cows. It's also why darker meat is plant on turkey legs (where there's more agile muscle tissue) and lighter meat is found in the breasts.

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The freshest meat is actually royal.

A fresh-cut slab of cow'south meat is actually purplish in color, Savell says. Exposure to oxygen during the packing procedure turns it the scarlet-red tone we've come to acquaintance with freshness.

"This pigment is of major importance, since it represents the bright crimson colour desired by purchasers," reads "Lawrie's Meat Science," one of the tentpole books for students and professionals in the meat industry. Some producers take even gone and so far equally to treat their meat with carbon dioxide gas in order to lock in this ruddy color far past its normal lifespan.

But dark-brown does Not hateful it's bad.

After a few days in a grocery store display example, myoglobin molecules naturally oxidize and the meat eventually turns brownish, Savell says. It may look less appealing, but it isn't whatsoever less safe to eat.

"Brown meat doesn't mean it'south bad," Savell said. "Merely [grocery stores] volition discount it, mark it down. If you purchase brownish meat, just be sure to melt information technology correct away, because it's likely already been out at that place for three or iv days."

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A meat's color can tell you how it was cooked.

Meat changes color depending on its internal temperature at the fourth dimension of cooking. According to "Lawrie's Meat Science," red meat that reaches an internal temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit during cooking will have a bright red interior, while red meat cooked to 140 to 158 degrees will be pink. Anything hotter than that should turn the meat grayish-dark-brown.

Go along in mind, however, that the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture recommends cooking steak to an internal temperature of at to the lowest degree 145 degrees Fahrenheit and letting information technology remainder for three minutes to kill nasty bacteria that could make you sick.

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So if it'south non blood, what'southward all that juice?

If you're cooking fresh meat to rare, then you can expect a lot of red myoglobin to be present. Business relationship for the water that naturally occurs in muscle tissues, and you've got a brilliant-red juice that may look similar to blood, only isn't at all.

"Meat is about 70 percent water," Sevell says. "And so yous accept water, and myoglobin, and other pigments that leak out. That'due south where this juice comes from. I can assure you it's not blood."

But ... information technology'south nevertheless red juice that come from the inside of an animal, so that may not exist so comforting afterwards all.

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Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-the-blood-in-steak_n_57fc0219e4b0e655eab6eb36

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