Meat cooking shrinkage: Measurement of a new meat quality parameter

A parameter, meat cooking shrinkage (MCS), has been introduced based on investigations carried out on meat shrinkage caused by heat during cooking. MCS is the difference between the raw and cooked areas of the meat sample, expressed as a percentage of the raw area. The method uses a disk of meat (10 mm thick and 55 mm wide) measured before and after cooking in a hot air oven at 165 °C for 10 min, the meat having reached an internal temperature of 70 °C. Video image analysis was used to measure the meat sample area. The proposed MCS protocol permits us to measure cooking loss and to reduce cost and variability, moreover it could be improved to obtain color and marbling measurements by developing the image analysis software. Analysing two or more parameters on the same sample, the correlations among them should improve analysis efficacy. A detailed description of the measurement protocol of MCS is reported as well as its application to beef and pork.