Beef a la Dynamite

A NEW way of tenderising meat has just one snag--it involves a hefty
explosion.

Most people tenderise meat with a culinary hammer, bashing it repeatedly to
break down muscle fibres. Or you can add meat-tenderising powder, which
contains an enzyme that digests muscle fibre and connective tissue. But how
do you tenderise meat on an industrial scale?


Photo: Charlie Stebbings/Anthony Blake PL

Researchers at the US Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland,
think they have an answer. They have been blasting meat with water at
explosive pressures. And they have found their process also kills
food-poisoning bacteria, such as E. coli, in the meat. "We think it is
probably rupturing the bacterial cell walls," says lead scientist Morse
Solomon, who outlined the idea at a Honolulu conference this week.

The process works by sending a shock wave through the meat to bust the tough,
chewy fibres. To create the shock wave, researchers place a slab of meat on
top of a steel plate at the bottom of a water-filled plastic garbage can.
Then they detonate an explosive--equivalent to about a quarter of a stick of
dynamite--inside the can. The water transmits the shock wave through the
meat, but the unfortunate garbage can gets blown to smithereens.

Solomon says the shock waves penetrate the entire cut of meat, so bugs deep
inside it are killed--achieving a thousand-fold reduction in bacteria levels
during tests.

The process works best on small, garbage-can-sized batches. A larger tank
doesn't work as well, for reasons that aren't yet clear. And the meat has to
be packaged in robust containers so it isn't destroyed.

Food processing plants might worry about using explosives, so the ARS is
trying other methods of creating shock waves. One idea is to use a powerful
pulse of electricity to create the shock.

Randy Huffman of the American Meat Institute in Arlington, Virginia, welcomes
the idea but says: "The real challenge will be getting this implemented in a
real-world solution."

Kurt Kleiner