ABSTRACT
Meat is a complex structure comprising roughly 75% water, 20% protein, and 5% fat and other substances. This poses some challenges modeling heat transfer from frozen to thawed meat, from raw to cooked meat, and for searing the surface. Cooking raw meat can be thought of in terms of denaturing proteins. There are several ways that proteins are denatured in the kitchen, including mechanical agitation when whipping egg whites, using acids like vinegar and lemon juice, curing with inorganic salts, alcoholic marinades, and cleaning with detergents, but cooking mainly involves heat. Modern convection steam ovens allow the injection of steam to increase the wet-bulb temperature to near the dry-bulb temperature, between about 65 and 90 °C, and so increase the rate of cooking. Likewise, increasing the difference between the dry- and wet-bulb temperatures increases evaporation and leads to the surface desiccating.
