What they do is inject salt water into large chunks of meat, and the result is a nice piece of meat which feels springy to the touch, more tender. It can be done with any kind of meat, by the way.
Take a scrawny, aging chicken, put it out of its misery, pluck it, inject it and hey presto, one nice looking chicken, ready to be wrapped and sold as fresh. Nice job. Do the same with a side of bacon too. Turn it into good, succulent looking slices.
How do you tell that meat has been plumped? That’s easy.
When you cook the chicken, what looked like it could feed four people can now only reasonably feed three. Yes, it shrank as the injected water evaporated out during the cooking period. The only way to ensure that it doesn’t shrink too much is to seal the outside of the chicken in a sauté pan before committing it to a roasting dish, It helps seal in the salt water.
And the bacon? When you opened the pack, did it drip water out all over the counter top? That is some of the salt water, forced out by compression of the packs in their packing boxes. The longer that the bacon sits in transit, the more water will come out when the pack is opened. The rest comes out in the pan.
You may have struggled to fit the pieces of bacon into the pan at the start of cooking, but see how it has all shrunk to under half the surface area. The water has all but left the bacon, but much of the salt will most likely remain. One thing that you do not want to do is add more salt before eating.
So, how do you feel about this practice? Paying for an illusion, water that will evaporate before you get to serve the meat up to your family? Be happy in the knowledge that it may not have been your cooking methods which caused the Sunday roast to shrivel beyond all recognition.
Blame the scammers, the unscrupulous meat producers who will do anything to ensure that their profits stay high..
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