components to develop flavor. Raw meat is bland, almost flavorless. Both the method of cooking

and browning are keys to great flavor. Any browned meat has more flavor than unbrowned

meat. In fact, any food develops more flavor when heated to a high temperature—fruits,

vegetables, sugar, bread crust in the oven, even soup bones for stock. This is thanks to the

browning reaction.

The browning reaction

Maillard, a French chemist, in 1912 heated sugar (as glucose) and glycerine (a sweet

syrupy alcohol) and produced a strong meat flavor, even though there was no meat in the

mixture. He called this the browning reaction, and today it is also referred to as Maillard

reaction.

The flavor that we recognize as meat flavor develops through this reaction between 104°

and 122°F (40°and 50°C) from chemical reactions between protein (amino acids) and available

sugar in the meat. If you continue heating the meat, the sugar also caramelizes, a process that

initiates another long chain of chemical reactions with many more flavor products that become

part of the complex meat flavor.

TASTINGS Boiled versus roasted meat.

In a comparison study of beef, food scientists prepared two identical cuts in a

food laboratory. They boiled the first piece and roasted the second. Before they

taste-tested (an eventually devoured) the meat, they gave both pieces to their

technicians to analyze all the volatile aroma compounds in each piece. The

technicians found a mere 94 in the boiled cut, but 287 in the roasted piece. This

large difference accounts for the far superior flavor of browned meat. It takes time

for the aroma compounds to develop. That's one reason why microwave cooking

is inferior to oven roasting. It is too fast and lacks the intense heat that develops

the flavors of the browning reaction. The same is true for most cooking and

baking projects in the kitchen—speed sacrifices flavor.

Safety

The meat from a healthy animal is sterile. Bacterial contamination comes from outside

the animal and often from the hands of meat workers. Today's meat processing plants are not

only extremely efficient but nearly as sterile as a hospital operating room, with the utmost care to

avoid contamination. Of course, it is not possible to completely eliminate some bacterial

contamination, as it is not possible in an operating room. But even if some bacteria is present, a

healthy person’s body has no problem to fight off an occasional light bacterial contamination,

whether it is from meat, unwashed fruit, ice cream from a street vendor or water at the drinking

fountain.

American and Canadian consumers felt impervious to meat contamination because of

meticulous inspection by the meat industry. We considered our meat to be the safest in the world

and didn't hesitate to barbecue hamburgers and steaks rare, even so rare that the internal

temperature barely registered lukewarm and the color remained pinkish-red. These temperatures,

of course, are the favorite breeding grounds for any organism, micro or macro.

An outbreak of food poisoning in the Seattle, Washington area in January 1993 surprised

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