Cooking Meat

Meat is rarely consumed raw, although some cultures include the practice and one or two western dishes, notably steak tartare and carpaccio, do call for raw meat. There are several good reasons for cooking meat. Safety is one; raw meat may carry pathogenic organisms.

Cooking also enhances flavour and makes meat easier to chew and digest. It affects the structure of meat in several ways. It acts on the muscle fibres, in which the proteins coagulate, becoming shrunk and dense under prolonged heating. Collagen dissolves slowly at a low temperature, faster at a higher one. searing or surface browning enhances flavour (but does not form a juice-retaining crust, as was thought in the 19th century). Cooking denatures the myoglobin; it retains its red oxymyoglobin form in rare meat, but oxidizes and turns greyish-brown on further heating.