Well, who’d have thought plums and beef were a great combination?

Turns out some folks at Texas A&M discovered that purees of dried plum, or dried plum mixed with apple, may be used as food preservative ingredients in ready-to-eat meat products, like roast beef.

The idea was to find something natural to substitute for the synthetic antioxidants like butylhydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylhydroxytoluene (BHT) presently used to slow down the oxidative deterioration of food.

The researchers, led by Professor Jimmy Keeton from Texas A&M, prepared the beef roasts by adding a brine containing no plum ingredient (control), dried plum juice (2.5 or 5 per cent), fresh plum juice concentrate (2.5 or 5 per cent), or spray dried plum powder (2.5 or 5 per cent). The roasts were then cooked, vacuum-packed and refrigerated for 10 weeks.

Keeton and co-workers report that all the plum ingredients exerted an antioxidant effect, with the best results coming from the 2.5 per cent dried plum juice and fresh plum juice concentrates Additionally, it seems the added plum ingredients only made a minimal difference on scores of tenderness, taste, colour and appearance..

Well, how about that? Maybe one of these days in our local grocery stores we’ll be able to buy naturally grown beef preserved naturally with plum good products.

Meat Science, Volume 80, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 997-1004

Post from: Health Food Made Easy

Plum Good Health Food Info