Meat Juice

[Shalmanese]

So I've been wondering, every time you freeze and defrost meat, theres always some cell rupturing and juice leaks out. The only time I've seen anybody mention it is to tell me to discard this meat juice. However, I've been playing around a bit with it and I'm convinced theres a huge amount of flavour locked in there which has a lot of potential if it can be harnessed correctly.

As far as I can tell, meat juice consists of protein and water. If you cook it, the protein will clump up into an insoluable lump. If you let the water dissolve, then the protein mat will start to brown very easily. If you taste the browned meat juice, the flavour of it is pure essence of browned meat and tastes like the charred surface of a steak.

The problem is that the texture of just the protein is mildly offputting. It's sort of rubbery and squeaky. The second problem is that the mat seems to be completely insoluble. I haven't figured out a good way to integrate this flavour into a sauce. I've tried buzzing it with a hand blender and that gives somewhat acceptable results but theres still a mildly gritty texture to the sauce.

As far as I know, I haven't read about anybody else trying to use this meat juice but I really want to capture that flavour.

[srhcb]

Would this be similar to using blood in cooking?

I'm thinking you could use the "juice" in sausage making, where the coagulation is useful.

SB (think blood sausage )

Edited December 4, 2006 by srhcb (log)

[MGLloyd]

Unless the juice was thoroughly cooked, I could see it as a rich source of bacterial contamination.

[BryanZ]

Why not just filter it and use it as a subtle finishing jus?