Food science (or maybe biology?) question

[Guest mrcurious]

Sometimes, when I bake a piece of *apparently* fresh (i.e. unfrozen) meat (e.g. a roast) or chicken, I find quite a bit of water collected in the roasting pan. Sometimes, there's very little.

 

Anyone have any guesses as to what the presence or absence of water means? I suspect it might be related to whether the meat I'm cooking has previously been frozen. If it was frozen at some point, I imagine the cell walls would probably burst and would release lots of water. If so, then I would expect to find very little "leaked out" water when I cooked the meat, since the water would have already leaked out when the meat defrosted.

[Aardvark]

A lot of the meat we can buy in shops has had water injected into it.

 

This can be to add preservatives (such as sodium nitrates), but it also has the effect of bulking out the meat and making it seem better value for money than it really is.

[YT2095]

meat (like any animal flesh) is over 50% water anyway, you will get some of that water displaced from the meat stucture during freezing (the whole idea behind freeze drying), in fact if a peice of meat is left in the freezer too long you`ll often get what`s called "Freezer Burn".

 

the cooking method has alot to do with this also, hence for roasts it`s best to pre-heat the oven quite high, so that the outside of the meat "Seals" locking in the moisture

[ed84c]

If you dont want water injected into it, then avoid shrink rapped and supermarket meats. However too little juices in the pan means no gravy!

[Dave]

Happens here too, but the chicken I buy is proper stuff. I guess it's like YT says; there tends to be a lot of water in it anyway

[Primarygun]

Oil? Is it possible?

[ed84c]

you mean is the liquid out of it oil?

[YT2095]

there will be some Fats come from the meat yes, some will be solid at room temp and others not.

Lamb and beef fats will be solid, Chicken fats less likely and pork fats are a 50/50.

[Primarygun]

you mean is the liquid out of it oil?

Ya. Is heat able to destroy cell membranes, causing oil being generated from the membrane?