Glued meats

Squeezy

It has just come to me attention about the practise of glueing meats together to sell as quality product.

Check it out here, especially the video portion;  http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/03/29/industry-wide-use-of-meat-glue-sticks-together-scraps-of-meat-to-sell-you-prime-cuts/

gerhardk

Good reason to shop at a butcher you trust rather than save 50¢ at Walmart.

It is not just meat that is suspect, the Chinese are exporting honey that is not really pure honey and tainted with all sorts of impurities  http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/22/tainted-chinese-honey-may-be-on-u-s-store-shelves/

Gerhard

Gato

Good reason to shop at a butcher you trust rather than save 50¢ at Walmart.

You said it. +1

gdenby

As far as I know, the most common use of glued meat is imitation crab, which has been around for about 35 years. There are probably lots of processed meat foods that use transglutaminase to get a mess of shreds to hold a shape.

Selling a bunch of tender scraps as a steak is a dubious practice, to say the least. But the meat bits should all be tender. The problem is that meat so much sliced up is suspect for contamination. And steaks are typically not cooked to pasteurization temperatures. So it seems to me that the biggest problem with the practice is safety.

Nevertheless, I wish I had some transglutaminase on hand. I've got 4 de-boned turkey thighs cooking right now. I'm a novice at cutting out the bones, so the remaining chunks are pretty ragged and uneven. It would been nice to "glue" them up into 4 smooth podlike shapes for more even cooking.

gerhardk

Nevertheless, I wish I had some transglutaminase on hand. I've got 4 de-boned turkey thighs cooking right now. I'm a novice at cutting out the bones, so the remaining chunks are pretty ragged and uneven. It would been nice to "glue" them up into 4 smooth podlike shapes for more even cooking.

Butchers twine should do the trick for you.  

Making lesser meats look like better cuts seems wrong to me.  From a food safety point of view all the little pieces had exposure to oxygen so a much higher chance of bacterial growth and the toxins they produce that will remain no matter how high the "meat" is cooked. 

Gerhard

Squeezy

Nevertheless, I wish I had some transglutaminase on hand. I've got 4 de-boned turkey thighs cooking right now. I'm a novice at cutting out the bones, so the remaining chunks are pretty ragged and uneven. It would been nice to "glue" them up into 4 smooth podlike shapes for more even cooking.

Butchers twine should do the trick for you.  

Making lesser meats look like better cuts seems wrong to me.  From a food safety point of view all the little pieces had exposure to oxygen so a much higher chance of bacterial growth and the toxins they produce that will remain no matter how high the "meat" is cooked. 

Gerhard

Thank you ... you got my point exactly!