Water-injected meat is rampant in the market. How can you identify it? There are four methods to identify water-injected meat.
Professor Huiming Li from the Department of Nutrition, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University answered: There are four methods to identify water-injected meat.
First, touch
Touch the surface of the meat with your hand. Water-injected meat feels moist, while fresh, non-injected pork has a certain stickiness and is not wet.
Second, look
After being injected with water, the muscle's color becomes paler or light grayish-red, appearing swollen. From the cut surface, it looks wet. Fresh, non-injected pork has white fat, shiny muscle, even red color, and a surface that is slightly dry or slightly moist.
Third, press
This means observing the elasticity of the muscle. Trustworthy meat will spring back immediately after being pressed, indicating good elasticity. Water-injected meat has reduced elasticity; the depression recovers more slowly after being pressed, and with heavy pressure, liquid can be seen seeping from the cut surface.
Fourth, test
You can place a paper towel on the meat and then quickly remove it. If the paper towel becomes wet all at once and comes off intact, it might be water-injected meat. Then, use a lighter to ignite the paper towel. If the paper towel does not burn completely, the pork is most likely "water-injected meat." This is because fresh pork has a certain stickiness, making the paper towel difficult to peel off. The paper towel absorbs the grease from the pork, causing it to burn very thoroughly.