Can You Eat Gray Meat?
Meat eaters are not a monolith. Some seem to enjoy the innards of eating animals, even going so far as butchering their own, while others prefer to buy sterile, shrink-wrapped packages of tenders and/or boneless, skinless breasts.
The latter breed of carnivore usually takes great care when choosing, preparing and storing steaks, ground meats or roasts, and that’s a good thing. (Eating bad meat can be confusing.) Bright red minced meat is rarely alarming, but what about gray meat, brown meat, or meat that is shiny or speckled? Should red meat always be red, or are these other colors just part of the meat rainbow?
What is “red” meat?
“Red meat” is not a scientific term, but a culinary one, and is used to refer to meat that is red when raw and dark when cooked. Beef, lamb, goat, horse, venison, elk are all examples of red meat.
Sometimes the factors of maturity of the animal: the steak from an adult cow is undoubtedly red, but the veal (calf meat) is strikingly pale. The color of the meat can also vary from animal to animal, depending on what kind of action a particular piece of muscle has experienced. Chickens rarely use their breasts, as almost all of their flights are made in short, unsteady bursts, but their small feet carry them all day. The more a muscle is used, the more oxygen it needs, and myoglobin—the oxygen-binding protein responsible for delivering said oxygen to those muscles—turns red when exposed to oxygen. This is why chicken legs and dark breast are considered “dark” meats; it’s a matter of use .
Why does red meat turn gray?
Picking up a pound of bright red minced meat only to find that the inside of your hamburger looks dull and gray the moment you bring it home is common when buying meat. And if you’ve ever bought a pack of steaks stacked tightly together and tightly wrapped, you probably noticed a few gray or brown spots when you took them out of the package, especially where the steaks were close together. come into contact with each other.
None of these scenarios are cause for concern, and again everything depends on oxygen. According to the USDA , these color changes are completely natural:
Beef muscle that has not been exposed to oxygen (for example, vacuum-packed) has a burgundy or purple color. After being exposed to air for 15 minutes or so, the myoglobin is given oxygen and the meat turns bright, cherry red. After being refrigerated for about five days, beef may turn brown. This darkening is due to oxidation, a chemical change in myoglobin due to oxygen content. This is a normal change when stored in the refrigerator.
The brown or gray color of the meat does not automatically mean that it has gone bad, but it may mean that it has had more time to oxidize. A few gray spots or a less red interior due to lack of oxygen are not a threat, but a steak with a completely brown surface is probably best avoided as it indicates the meat has been oxidizing for at least a few days. if not longer.
Luckily, color isn’t the only indicator of freshness we have at our disposal. Smell and touch are also available. Throw away any meat that smells nasty, sour, or ammonia, and do the same for any meat that feels sticky or slimy.
Does red always equal freshness?
Given everything we’ve just covered, you might think that redness is the easiest and most reliable way to identify a piece of very fresh meat. It would have been so if not for capitalism.
In addition to oxygen and oxygen-binding proteins, the brain of the average meat eater associates a read color with freshness. Supermarkets know this and know that bright, aggressive red meats are easier to sell than meats that are less brightly colored. Redness, or lack thereof, depends on a number of chemical reactions, and these reactions can be tampered with at the meat counter.
According to Harold McGee for the New York Times , treating meat (or fish) with carbon monoxide can keep it looking fresh, even if it’s no longer at its best. Oxygen binds to the iron atom in myoglobin so that it can be transported throughout the body, and carbon monoxide can bind to it in exactly the same place:
Carbon monoxide is an effective color fixer. It sticks like a leech to the iron atom of myoglobin, turning the molecule its characteristic cherry red color and preventing it from reacting with anything else, including oxygen. This is exactly what the carbon monoxide in the air we breathe does to the hemoglobin in our blood, and why it can suffocate us. But in amounts applied to meat and fish, it does not suffocate bacteria. Thus, there are concerns that carbon monoxide treatment may mislead consumers into eating fish and meat that are old enough to start spoiling. For this and other reasons, it is banned in Europe and Japan.
But carbon monoxide only affects the color. It can’t mask bad odors or make the steak less sticky, so use all your senses when buying and cooking meat and you’ll be fine.
How about this shiny thing?
A cooked meal, such as roast beef, can sometimes have a shiny, iridescent surface. According to the USDA , this is due to the wide variety of chemical compounds present in each slice:
Sliced boiled beef or dinner meat may have an iridescent color. Meat contains iron, fat and many other compounds. When light hits a piece of meat, it splits into colors like a rainbow. Meat also contains various pigments that can give it an iridescent or greenish hue when exposed to heat and processing. Rainbow beef isn’t necessarily tainted. Spoiled cooked beef is also likely to be slimy or sticky and have a bad odor.
Raw meat can also show iridescence due to the refraction of light by muscle and fat, but its presence is not indicative of spoilage. According to The Ohio State University , salting, cooking, and even how the meat is cut can affect iridescence, but there’s no reason to worry about it, even if it looks pretty green. Trust your nose and poke a little into the meat. Stinky, sticky meat is never good to eat, no matter what color it is.