A protocol to measure the free water in raw and cooked meat

The water holding capacity of meat is one of the most important factors affecting the quality. There is a multitude of procedures to measure the WHC on raw and cooked meat but results in the literature are difficult to compare and correlate. To solve this problem it has been developed a protocol to be used on the same meat sample, to analyze the water loss at different stages of its commercial food life during: thawing, cooking, cooling and consumption. The water on raw meat is measured as: thawing; drip; total area, ring and meat film area at 10' by compression; free water. On cooked meat: cooking and cooling loss; available cooked meat water. Parameters are expressed as the per cent out of the total water content. The traditional parameters are achieved at a lower cost and with coefficients of variation lower or at most similar to that reported in the literature. In addition, two new parameters which measure cooling loss and available cooked meat water allow to better define the available water at the time of consumption. The protocol uses two devices specifically designed by the authors to automate and improve the accuracy of some of the proposed parameters.