Restructuring meat: the McRib and friends

For the most part, store-bought sandwiches don’t carry much meaning for me, except the McRib. I don’t really like it (the sauce is too sweet), but the McRib makes me think of my mother. She loved it, and when it would ‘come back’ we had to go to McDonalds and get one. Now, every time it resurfaces, I smile and think of my mom and the joy she got out of a sweet BBQ pork sandwich.

Mom with Wyn at a
Meat Conference
 in Nebraska

The McRib is actually a fun, meat science success story. In the 1970’s, a meat scientist at the University of Nebraska named Dr. Roger Mandigo worked with the National Pork Board to develop a product that could be sold in McDonalds. He developed what we call a restructured product. It’s really a simple sausage made with pork, water, and salt, but rather than being shaped in a cylinder by a sausage casing, it’s formed into a shape that looks like ribs.

Sausages are made by using salt to extract the proteins in the meat. Salt literally reshapes the proteins at a molecular level, turning them inside out, and causing them to stick together. When the sausages are cooked, the texture of the final product changes. Think about how the texture of a hamburger patty is different from a sausage or hotdog. How much the proteins are extracted affects the texture changes and that will differ based on how much salt or other ingredients are used and how much they are mixed.

Dr. Mandigo is a giant in
meat science. Working with
 him at Nebraska would be
the equivalent to being
coached by Lou Holtz or
learning Physics from
Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

When salt is mixed with ground meat, the result is actually called a batter and can be poured or injected into trays or casings that will create any shape. It’s like the way cakes take the shape of the pan when you cook them.  It was actually the folks at McDonalds that settled on the rib shape.

If you look at the ingredients of the McRib on McDonald’s website, you’ll see the ingredients are pork, water, salt, dextrose and rosemary extract. Pork is trimmings only from skeletal muscles, like the ones that move bones around. When salt is added to the pork, the extracted proteins will absorb water, making the patty juicier.  The dextrose is just sugar that’s added to counter-act the saltiness, and rosemary extract is an antioxidant that helps prevent rancidity and improve flavor.

Slather the patty in sweet sauce, add onion, pickle and a sesame seed bun and… BOOM! Iconic Sandwich!

Poultry scientists have used similar methods to develop chicken nuggets in all sorts of fun shapes. We had Dino-nuggets for lunch just the other day. The McChicken sandwich is another restructured product. So are chicken fries, fish sticks, Salisbury steak, and some chicken-fried steaks.

Chill... it's just freezing.

 

It seems so simple to just freeze something. You get meat really cold, it lasts a long time. But, we all know it is not that simple. Lots of questions arise with freezing. Questions about packaging, timing, size of cuts, type of freezer, how to thaw it and what it does to quality, all come up when freezing meat. So, let’s talk about them.

Packaging

Air is the enemy when you are freezing foods. Air allows for oxidation and freezer burn. You want to keep air away from the surface of the cuts in any way you can. For meat, the best packaging method when freezing is vacuum. Some butchers use vacuum packaging, and you can buy vacuum packaged cuts in the store. At home, you can buy a small vacuum packager and package cuts yourself. If you freeze lots of meat cuts at home, that may be a good investment for you.

Ground cuts that are packaged in chubs are essentially in vacuum, but you may get a little spoilage in the edges, near the opening, but most of the meat is protected from air.

The wax paper wrap that butchers use also works well in the freezer. It keeps the air away from the cuts pretty well, but those packages don’t last as long as vacuum. If you are buying a whole or half beef, it will take a long time to go through it all. The packages will likely be in your freezer for several months.

At home, you may want to try those freezer bags that zip closed. Make sure that you squeeze as much air out of those as you can before you close them. I try to fold them over and create a kind of seal around my cuts. Packaging like that won’t last as long as vacuum or wax paper.

The worst way to package meat for the freezer is the foam tray and overwrap like you see in the grocery store. That wrap is designed to allow oxygen through (that’s what makes the meat red), so freezing meat in those packages is just asking for freezer burn. 

Timing

The USDA guidelines state that you should consume frozen steaks, chops, and roasts within 4 to 12 months of freezing. After that, it’s not as much a safety issue, but eating quality. Juiciness, flavor, tenderness may suffer some if you wait longer than a year. In vacuum packaging in a chest or stand up freezer, whole muscle cuts last months and months.

Sausage, ground beef, and cooked meats don’t fare as well. Grinding, cooking, and adding ingredients like salt are all things that make meat oxidize more quickly and that can even happen in the freezer. USDA suggests ground beef only be stored frozen for 4 months. Cooked meats, even less than that (2-3 months).

Sizing

When you are putting fresh meats in the freezer for the first time, you want them to freeze as quickly as possible. So, smaller cuts and packages work better than large ones. If you like to buy things in bulk, its best to repackage meats into portion-sized packages and freeze it in smaller packages. Then, you can just take them out as you need them, rather than having everything frozen together. I like to flatten ground beef packages out so they will stack, and they will freeze faster.

Placement

Keeping with the concept of freezing meat as quickly as possible, you want to make sure that you spread non-frozen things out in the freezer when you first put them in there. Don’t put it all together in one place. It will take a long time to freeze, and I’ve even seen things spoil in the middle when they don’t get frozen completely.

Hopefully if you buy a large quantity of meat, it will come frozen and you can put it all in the freezer at the same time, but if you need to freeze a large quantity all at once, you may consider freezing it over several days.  Put some cuts in the freezer and spread them out, let them freeze, and put in a few more cuts the next day. Whole muscle cuts are ok for a few weeks in the fridge, so just be aware of how long they’ve been stored. If you have to freeze cuts over a few days like this, freeze the ground cuts first.

Which freezer is best?

If you are planning to store frozen meat for several months, its best to do so in a chest freezer or an upright freezer that is only a freezer. The freezer in your fridge is ok for short term freezer storage, but think about how often it is opened and every time the door opens, it loses cold air. It’s best to have your meat stored in a specified freezer, even if it’s a small one.

Thawing

A few years ago, I wrote a whole post about thawing frozen meat, and in short, it’s best to thaw meat in cold water or in the refrigerator. Cold running water works best. The microwave is ok, too. You shouldn’t set meat on the counter to thaw. You don’t want it to spend too much time in the danger zone of temperature where pathogens have a chance to grow.  Also, you can always just cook your meat from frozen.

Can I thaw and refreeze?

Yes. Some people are concerned about meat that has been frozen, thawed and refrozen. As long as it stayed below 40°F when it was thawed, food-safety wise, it should be fine. It may lose some juiciness or have flavor issues from being thawed and refrozen, but chances are, you won’t even be able to tell.

Whole muscle cuts like steaks, chops and roasts take this treatment better than ground and processed cuts. Also, you don’t want to thaw ground beef and leave it thawed for very long at all if you decide to refreeze. At refrigerated temperatures, oxidation happens and it will be accelerated in meat that has been previously frozen.

*If for some reason, your freezer loses power, don’t open it. That will just cause you to lose the cold air that’s in there. The meat will stay frozen for a while without power. When you get power back or get a new freezer, check the temperature of the meat. Is it still frozen? Is it thawed, but still cold (below 40°F)? If these are true, its probably ok to just refreeze. If the meat is at room temperature or its been over 40°F for 4-6 hours or more, you need to discard it.

What does freezing do to quality?

The answer to this question is complicated. It depends. Some aspects of quality may actually be improved with freezing. Researchers at South Dakota State found that freezing beef actually improved the tenderness of beef steaks compared to non-frozen. The ice crystals in the beef acted like tiny little tenderizers.

For the most part, in whole muscle cuts under ideal conditions, freezing doesn’t have much effect on other aspects of quality like flavor and juiciness. Leaving something in the freezer for long periods or poor packaging may result in flavor issues and loss of juiciness, though. Ground beef and processed meats are more prone to flavor problems when they have been frozen, but under good conditions (packaging and fast freezing), the benefits of storing meat in the freezer out-weighs the problems.

 

I hope my post is helpful in answering your freezing questions. Like always, please reach out if you have any questions or concerns.