SC - Very OOP for the Adventurous Cook

[Daniel Phelps]

The following falls in the don't try this at home catagory

>Beef a la Dynamite
>
>A NEW way of tenderising meat has just one snag--it involves a hefty
>explosion.
>
>Most people tenderise meat with a culinary hammer, bashing it repeatedly to
>break down muscle fibres. Or you can add meat-tenderising powder, which
>contains an enzyme that digests muscle fibre and connective tissue. But how
>do you tenderise meat on an industrial scale?
>
>Researchers at the US Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville,
Maryland,
>think they have an answer. They have been blasting meat with water at
>explosive pressures. And they have found their process also kills
>food-poisoning bacteria, such as E. coli, in the meat. "We think it is
>probably rupturing the bacterial cell walls," says lead scientist Morse
>Solomon, who outlined the idea at a Honolulu conference this week.
>
>The process works by sending a shock wave through the meat to bust the
>tough, chewy fibres. To create the shock wave, researchers place a slab of
>meat on top of a steel plate at the bottom of a water-filled plastic
garbage
>can. Then they detonate an explosive--equivalent to about a quarter of a
>stick of dynamite--inside the can. The water transmits the shock wave
>through the meat, but the unfortunate garbage can gets blown to
smithereens.
>
>Solomon says the shock waves penetrate the entire cut of meat, so bugs deep
>inside it are killed--achieving a thousand-fold reduction in bacteria
levels
>during tests.
>
>The process works best on small, garbage-can-sized batches. A larger tank
>doesn't work as well, for reasons that aren't yet clear. And the meat has
to
>be packaged in robust containers so it isn't destroyed.
>
>Food processing plants might worry about using explosives, so the ARS is
>trying other methods of creating shock waves. One idea is to use a powerful
>pulse of electricity to create the shock.
>
>Randy Huffman of the American Meat Institute in Arlington, Virginia,
>welcomes the idea but says: "The real challenge will be getting this
>implemented in a real-world solution."