A Penetrometer Test to Measure Meat Tenderness

Abstract

SUMMARY Attempts to relate mechanical measures of raw meat tenderness to cooked meat tenderness have generally been unsuccessful. Therefore, a study was designed to evaluate the use of a simple penetration test to predict cooked meat tenderness from the force required to penetrate the raw meat sample. An Allo‐Kramer Shear Press was modified to function as a penetrometer by replacing the Standard Shear‐Compression cell and shearing blades with a plate containing 5 needles. The needles were made from 1/8‐in.‐diameter drill rod and were semiblunt, having 0.007‐in.‐diameter land and 0.472/1.0‐in.‐taper. Using slices from the longissimus dorsi muscle of pork, various factors of the time‐force curve were analyzed to determine which would give the best indication of tenderness. It was found that the maximum force value gave the best results. Regression analysis showed correlations significant at the 1% level between the force necessary to penetrate the raw sample versus both force necessary to penetrate the cooked sample and trained technological panel evaluations.

Relation of penetrometer readings on raw beef with cooked tenderness

“…This indicates that the penetrometer can be very useful, especially in experimental work, where it has the big advantage of being a nondestructive tv/ . The correlations were better than those found within the previous work on pork (Hinnergardt and Tuomy, 1970).…”

“…Informal work at these laboratories has shown the same thing when the Lee-Kramer shear press is used. However, replacing the standard Lee-Kramer cell with penetrometer needles has resulted in significant correlations at the 1% level with r's of 0.5-0.6 with the longissimus dorsi muscle of pork (Hinnergardt and Tuomy, 1970).…”

Antioxidant effects of black garlic powder on spent duck meat nugget quality during storage

“…Tenderness of nugget was determined using penetrometer according to the method of Hinnergardt & Tuomy (1970). A 1.5 cm thick nugget was placed under the penetrometer machine's needle with a weight of 50 g, and its chuck was released for 10 s. The length of penetration of the chuck into the sample (mm) was recorded.…”

Definition and Measurement of Meat Texture in Military Development and Procurement

“…However, in the last few years there have been at least two instruments developed to predict tenderness, both employing needles. One developed at this Center (Hinnergardt and Tuomy, 1970;Galloway, et al, 1973) utilizes an Allo-Kramer Shear Press functioning as a penetrometer with five specially designed needles. Simple linear correlations between raw penetrometer readings and technological taste panel results were found to be -0.78 to -0.84 for beef and -0.50 to -0.63 for pork.…”