Key Takeaways
• Cattle wood meat that becomes gray is not necessarily a red flag – it could have been exposed to air.
• Trust common sense: if the meat is slimy or smell bad, don’t use it.
• Cook cattle meat thoroughly to 160 ° F.
Cattle wood meat is a working animal a week. If you have a pound of beef meat, you are on the best way to the Hamburg Mac, a juicy burger or a minced meat -Bulgogi. But what if you grab the beef offspring out of the fridge or freezer and it is gray? Is dinner doomed to fail? In short, the answer is … maybe.
Why does cattle meat become gray?
Freshly cut meat is a violet or burgundy colored color, but that changes quickly. “Oxygen reacts with myoglobin (a protein found in the muscles), which darkens the meat,” says Brittany TowersThe food scientist behind it The black food scientist.
After about 15 minutes of the air out of the air, the meat turns the bright red color, which we see in the butcher case. After about five days in the fridge, the outside becomes gray.
What about raw beef meat meat that is red and brownish red in the middle?
Let us rethink our friend Myoglobin. Myoglobin has three color states: purple, red and gray/brown. We have touched how the gray/brown state can occur after a long storage, but this color shift can also be caused if the meat is exposed to small quantities of oxygen, as the surroundings are stacked on top of each other in the middle of its beef offspring or when prefabricated burger packs are stacked on top of each other.
Can I cook it?
To find out whether raw beef meat is safe to eat, use all of your senses – and your common sense. “As long as beef meat is not slimy or does not smell bad, the color doesn’t matter,” says Towers.
Use it within one or two days of buying or in a zipper bag to mark the outside of the bag with the date and freeze the meat for up to four months to keep it fresh from the freshest. Purpise the beef minced meat in the refrigerator before cooking.
The whole myoglobin conversation is also a good memory that The safest way to know when meat is cooked to temperature is to use an immediate thermometer.
If your beef meat is gray before cooking, do not say when it is cooked properly. The US Agriculture Ministry Recommends to cook beef wood meat to 160 ° F.
