Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Meat Glue aka Transglutaminase

I went to google about meat glue after hearing it a little and from the youtube videos it looks bad. But is it really bad?

You can find in reconstituted meat and seafood products like chicken nuggets, imitation crab meat and factory made fish balls. Extracted from animal source, i would say its somehow "natural".

Anyway, meat industry usage of the meat glue have given it a bad name. They are using it to bind trimming and end cuts of meat into a regular or prime cut. That is just cheating!

As for restaurant context, its application is endless.

From wikipedia;
Transglutaminase can be used in these applications:[citation needed]
Improving texture of emulsified meat products, such as sausages and hot dogs.
Binding different meat parts into a larger ones ("portion control"), such as in restructured steaks
Improving the texture of low-grade meat such as so-called "PSE meat" (pale, soft, and exudative meat, whose characteristics are attributed to stress and a rapid postmortem pH decline)
Making milk and yogurt creamier
Making noodles firmer


so how about doing something simple like sandwiching fish with herbs, truffles and butter?

___ Crispy fish skin
000 Fish meat
THB Truffle herbs butter
ooo Fish meat


Then the diner proceed to cut into the fish and find those truffles shavings inside the meat, wouldn't it be amazing?


I wonder...

Cooking is an endless learning process....

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