What is that red fluid in meat?

Some people prefer not to eat their meat red inside because they assume this color is due to blood. However, the red fluid is not blood, but myoglobin, an oxygen-binding protein that provides oxygen to an animal’s muscles. If this comes in contact with air, when meat is cut, it turns red. When heated, this protein takes on a darker color. Once myoglobin mixes with other fluid from meat (which is seventy percent water), the recognizable red “meat juice” is created. You can eat this without fear of turning into a vampire at full moon with sharp fangs and bloodlust.

The harder an animal’s muscle has had to work, the more myoglobin it contains and the redder (darker) it is. This explains why veal is lighter in color than meat from older cattle. The calf has had to do much less labor in its still young life. With chicken meat, you can see the same phenomenon if you compare the meat of the wings and breast with that of the legs and thighs. A chicken walks more than it flies, resulting in darker leg and thigh meat.

To return to blood: meat hardly contains any blood. At the slaughterhouse, they bleed the animals thoroughly because blood spoils quickly and can contaminate the meat. According to Jewish food laws (kashrut) , however, this is not enough. Before consuming meat, Jewish believers must first leave it in salt water for a time to remove any residue of blood; in fact, its consumption is strictly forbidden. This brining is done with coarse grains of salt called “corns” in English. Hence, brined meat is called corned beef there. In American cookbooks, you often come across the phrase kosher salt . This refers to the coarse-grained salt used for brining.