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Meat science

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Mesophilic:
I stumbled on this Meateater podcast the other day and figured some of you might find it interesting.

It's almost 2 hours long, so I just put in some earbuds and listened while I did some work.

They have a meat scientist on and he gives a ton of interesting info.  Some of my takeaways

     -rigor is a good thing, it burns up the glycogen in the muscle which in turn helps with flavor and tenderness
     - don't pack meat with snow,  cooling too quickly halts rigor
     - meat left on the bone till after rigor will be more tender
     - white or grey mold is ok...black mold is toxic
     - a little stress on the animal during the kill is ok, prolonged stress such as a slow death from gutshot is not good
     - the most benefit during aging occurs within the first week, after that theres a diminishing return
     - wet aging in plastic is fine

There was also some useful info about fats and silver skin, tenderizing, and other info that I can't recall right now.

Add the "H" to the prefix

ttps://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-227-red-cutter

Eric Krewson:
I had to change deer processers as my fave went out of business, the new one might cut up your deer they day you take it in, I like mine aged.

The new place charges $80 for a skin on deer but only $40 for a cooler deer. I bought a big cooler for this year, last year I used a smaller cooler and packed my deer in ice for a week before I took it to the processor, the meat was tender and wonderful.

Pappy:
Good info, most of it I have went by for many years. I always let mine soak on ice for at least 3 day and usually 5 before processing, draining the bloody water each day and add fresh. Then let it drain for a day on racks in the cooler, sure make the meat good /tender and a lot less messy to work with. :) After do this I have never really seen a difference in a gut shot deer and any other, and have dealt with many gut shot deer over the years. :) They sometimes stink to start with but after a few days on ice soaking, I can see/taste are smell any difference. JMO. :)
 Pappy

Mesophilic:
Pappy,

Do you put the meat in some thing that drains the melt water as the ice melts?  Or is it like a tub or ice chest with ice and melt water both in contact with the meat?

Wondering if the water leaches out undesirables.

JW_Halverson:
Toughest deer I ever ate was cut up blood warm, packaged, and immediately put in the freezer. Every cut was so tough you could not get a fork into the GRAVY! Tasted fine, just felt like you were gnawing on Goodyear's finest all-seasons. Ended up turning it all into burger. Had to brown the burger, then bake in a covered dish drowned in red wine at low temps for 3-4 hours to change it from being rubber buckshot. Made casseroles from that doe.

She was also a deer that had survived some injury that removed her hind leg from the hock down and she had absolutely zero fat on her.

I am not surprised rigor is good, rigor mortis is not permanent, but is a normal reaction of muscle after oxygen has been depleted. Once rigor has completed, muscle relaxes and becomes more tender. For those of you down south that have never had a chance to eat a well aged venison cut, you are really missing something!

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