Cooking and Novel Postmortem Treatments to Improve Meat Texture

Abstract Tenderness is an important meat quality trait and the consumer is prepared to pay more for quality in premium markets. Each piece of meat has physical properties, with varying importance in their contribution to texture which depends on the inherent hierarchical structure of the muscle, including the contribution of connective tissue proteins, structural proteins within the muscle cell, and degradation or disruption of these proteins. In addition, meat tissue consists of numerous molecules which denature, interact, and solubilize at different temperatures and time scales. Innovative and new processing and cooking technologies, such as high pressure processing, shockwave, ultrasound, pulsed electric field, Smartstretch, and sous vide cooking can be used to tenderize meat postmortem. This chapter will discuss these technologies as well as the importance of cooking in determining meat texture.