是什么让牛排变硬?

海伦:这是一个很好的问题，我自己并不喜欢吃牛排。但是我知道很多人喜欢它们，尤其是嫩牛排。所以我四处看了一下，想更多地了解你们这些人的吃肉习惯。这似乎是一个很复杂的答案，涉及到很多因素。这包括动物的品种，年龄，我发现非常有趣的是，你如何对待一只动物，直到它被屠宰，这与它的肉有多嫩有很大关系。这真的很令人惊讶。我还阅读了一些资料，似乎动物是如何被运送的，如果它们和狗这样的东西一起被驱赶，这些东西会吓到它们，这样的事情也会影响肉的质量。即使这种肉的品种是非常好的，非常嫩的，如果在屠宰前处理不当，这真的会伤害到优质的肉;这是要记住的。说到韧性，很大程度上也要归功于胶原蛋白，因为这是肉中最坚韧的部分; it's the connective tissue, and as an animal gets older it produces more collagen, which also becomes more interconnected (cross-linked) which makes it tougher; so, in general, older creatures are tougher to eat! Also, weight-bearing muscles tend to have more collagen in them as well, so they tend to be less tender.There is a measure of tenderness, which sounds nice! It's the "Warner-Bratzler Shear Force Test"...Chris - Bit of a mouthful, excuse the pun...Helen - It's the scientific (objective) way of measuring meat tenderness - it's the number of kilograms needed to shear, cut or pull apart a cubic centimetre of muscle.This measure varies from a tenderloin, really nice steak at about 2.6 through to a really tough cut of steak, which is more like five, five and a half.