Very fast chilling of beef carcasses

To determine if very fast carcass chilling (VFC; approximately –1°C within 5 h postmortem) of beef carcasses could be achieved through blast chilling, 96 carcasses of an estimated Canada 1 grade were used. The right side of each carcass was assigned to blast chilling conditions of either –20°C (48 sides) or –35°C (48 sides) while the left side was assigned to control chilling conditions (2°C for 24 h; 96 sides). Wind speed in the blast chill tunnel was 2.32 m s–1. Within each blast chill temperature, 12 blast-chilled sides were removed from the tunnel at each of four times (3, 5, 7 or 10 h) and chilled for the remainder of the 24-h period at 2°C. VFC conditions were not achieved in the deep hip region under any chilling regime, but were reached in the longissimus thoracis (LT) by approximately 6.5 h under rigorous chilling regimes (7 or 10 h of blast chilling at –35°C). After 6 d aging, LT muscles from sides blast chilled at –35°C for 10 h were more tender (22.4 vs. 29.3 N cm–2: P = 0.004) than those from...