Although many efforts have been made to improve and control the eating quality of meat, there is still high variability in palatability, which may ultimately result in customer dissatisfaction. Beef meat is especially intricate to study since consumers have specific preferences for degrees of doneness. The degrees of doneness in beef is known to affect its physicochemical properties and have a subsequent effect on palatability. Nevertheless, an in-depth investigation into the exact changes that occur with increasing internal end-point temperatures of meat is yet to be explored. With researchers implementing various cooking methods and cooking conditions (i.e., sample preparation and internal end-point temperatures), the results of studies are often impossible to compare. This review provides an overview of the various benefits and drawbacks of the cooking methods commonly used at home, in commercial enterprises, and research on meat. Furthermore, the physicochemical changes in meat with increasing degrees of doneness are discussed in detail with considerations of the subsequent changes in the sensory properties of meat.
Keywords: consumer; cooking methods; degrees of doneness; muscle foods; physical properties; taste; texture.
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