Abstract
Cooking of various food materials at lower but acceptable temperatures produces not only tender and tasty food but also nutritionally valuable food relative to food cooked by ordinal methods, i. e. boiling and baking.
Maitake (Grifola frondosa) extract contains proteases which have a high heat resistance as measured by casein hydrolysis assay. The optimal activity was observed at a temperature range between 50-70°C, and 30 to 40 percent of the original activity remained after heating at 70°C for 8 hours. Inside round cuts of beef cooked using low temperature steam cooking with maitake extracts released more protein into the soluble fraction than cooking with ginger extracts or by boiling. However, free gultamic acid, which contributes to umami taste, increased not only in the solubilized fraction but also inside the meat. Histological observation also presents a degradation of protein in the meat treated with maitake extract. Both measurements under the rheoner and sensory evaluation showed a remarkable improvement with respect to hardness and chewiness. All the results that are presented here demonstrate the advantage of combinational cooking at low temperature steam with extract from maitake for tenderizing meats. This suggests a superior method of cooking many other food materials to be served on the table.
