Prevent browning vacuum sealed beef?

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BaxtersBBQ

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Jan 5, 2020
171
190
Got this monster prime rib. Want to quarter it and vacuum seal it. How do I prevent it from browning and oxidizing when I reseal it?
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Give the other 1/4s you're not gonna use right away to friends as gifts! I'll be your friend! :emoji_blush:
But in all seriousness, guess I'm not understanding what you're talking about. The vac seal should keep them fresh in the freezer up to a year. Maybe I'll take a look at some vac sealed steaks we did awhile ago to see what color they are.

Ryan
 
I don’t plan on freezing it. It’s going to a few different families for Christmas/New Years dinners. I’ve had fresh steaks that browned pretty fast in the fridge after vacuum sealing. It’s something about the lack of oxygen in vacuum sealed bags? Don’t want to jeopardize the freshness by repackaging it since it’s pretty expensive. You think it’ll be ok?
 
You're not likely to stop it. When you open and cut it, it will "bloom" to red. this is myoglobin (sp) as the oxygen depletes from the myoglobin, it will brown. You see this in store bought meats all the time, especially beef. If you open a pkg of steaks that have been shingled in the pkg. You will find that the area where they are over-lapped is brown. If the ground beef is made into a tight loaf, it be brown in the center, less so if it is loose formed. If the pkg's of beef are stacked too high, the weight will cause the bottom pkg's to brown. All of this is due to oxygen depletion of the myoglobin.
Pork will also do this, but the color change is less dramatic.
Nothing wrong with it, just a visual thing.
 
Hello,

mosparky is correct; the hemoglobin turns brown when it's deprived of oxygen, but the meat is just fine. I own a vacuum sealing company and I had a query from a customer who purchased a large, commercial machine from me. He was selling bison and keeping it in a refrigerator instead of a freezer (which will help keep your meat red). We ended up selling him a gas flush vacuum sealer, which removes the oxygen, but allows you to insert some food grade gas into the bag prior to sealing it. He used a mixture of nitrogen with 1% carbon monoxide, which binds to the myoglobin and keeps the meat red. Problem solved.

I just found that interesting and I thought I'd pass that story along.

Lisa
Vacuumsealersunlimited.com
 
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