The red liquid coming out of our steak is NOT blood!
Anyone who orders chenille steak, medium to rare or medium rare, usually sees a red juice come out every time the knife is plunged into the meat.
Many people are horrified by this, which is why they rush to eat their meat well done, as they cannot bear the sight of blood.
Already when buying the meat, the red appearance of the liquid on the packaging is not particularly pleasant.
Except that the liquid which is present in the original packaging and which runs onto the plate even after cooking, is not blood! If you think about it, a steak doesn’t taste like blood – if it did, it wouldn’t be such a popular dish.
The colour in the liquid that comes out of the meat is due to a small muscle protein, myoglobin, which carries oxygen to the skeletal muscles and is similar in colour to haemoglobin, the blood protein.
The red liquid that comes out of our steak is not blood
The red hue of myoglobin is created when the meat is cut and comes into contact with air, producing a visual effect similar to blood. However, it is not blood by any means and it is a shame that some people lose the palatability of meat just because they confuse it with blood.
After all, most of the animal’s blood has been removed during the slaughtering and draining process.
Nevertheless, it is still a red ‘juice’ that comes out of the meat, which for many people still looks like blood.
Myoglobin, the protein largely responsible for the red colour of the meat, darkens when cooked, which explains why the steak changes colour the longer it is cooked.
