A novel time/temperature approach to sous vide cooking of beef muscle

Sous vide treatment is encountering a renewed interest among chefs and catering operators, but an important concern is that they had been joined by those who were not aware resulting in foods held at time/temperature combination that may be not appropriate by a qualitative point of view. In this study, beef semitendinosus muscles were sous vide cooked by applying two different time/temperature treatments, a typical low temperature-long time (LT-LT) condition realized by cooking 36 h at 75 A degrees C (SV75) and an innovative high temperature-short time (HT-ST) one for 2 h at 100 A degrees C (SV100). Data were compared to traditionally boiled meat, and changes in pasteurization values, weight loss, texture, color, vitamins of B group as well as volatile compounds profile were evaluated. HT-ST treatment proved to achieve a pasteurization value sufficient to exclude Clostridium perfringens risk, while on the contrary, LT-LT may be a sous vide cooking approach that could be subjected to this microbiological hazard. Total weight loss of SV100 resulted significantly lower compared to SV75. SV75 samples showed the lowest shear force and hardness, being also less red than the other two samples. In addition, vitamin B-3 retention was very similar for both sous vide methods, while LT-LT condition allowed a higher retention of B-12. Finally, volatile compounds of beef muscles cooked by means of LT-LT and HT-ST sous vide conditions showed lower accumulation of off-flavor such as hexanal or 3-octanone in comparison to traditional boiling technique and better preserved the volatile profile of raw meat. Sous vide cooking at HT-ST condition used in this study could represent a feasible alternative to low-temperature treatment allowing to obtain comparable or better qualitative standards except for vitamin B-12 retention and hardness.