Quick Dips

Meat Flavoured on the Hoof

Bill Rumball

AgResearch is trying to tempt the palate of overseas meat customers by adding a natural flavour to the product while it is still "on the hoof".

AgResearch Grasslands researchers are aware that meat from animals grazed on New Zealand's traditional grass pastures usually has a stronger and more distinctive odour and flavour than meat finished with grains in feedlot systems. This New Zealand or pastoral flavour is sometimes unattractive to some overseas markets.

In a novel twist to the principle that "you are what you eat", the researchers are trying to replace or mask undesirable flavours by feeding sheep some herb plants with strong culinary properties before they are slaughtered.

The herbs chosen for AgResearch's study are those already widely used and enjoyed in meat dishes in our overseas markets -- garlic, thyme, coriander, rosemary and lavender.

Herbs in the project are fed to lambs in different forms, in varying amounts and for various periods before slaughter. The meat from these animals is then given to trained taste panels, which try to detect in blind tests, the differences in odour, flavour and texture between this meat and some from normal grass pastures.

The results so far are promising, and suggest that flavours can certainly be transferred from plant to meat to palate. However, they are not yet consistent -- in all herbs there have been both positive and nil results form the taste panels.

In the best result so far, a 50-person taste panel from a Food Research Institute in Taiwan clearly identified "coriander" meat as being more tender, flavourful and generally preferable than other types.

And with thyme, the AgResearch chemists can clearly track the flavour ingredient from the plant into the fat tissue of the sheep, though not at levels that can always be detected by taste panels.

It would be preferable, but is not necessary, that the specific herb flavour itself was detected, but often the result is that the meat is simply more desirable in a generic sense.

The main focus of AgResearch's current research is on the supply of herbs such as coriander and thyme to sheep. How much do they need? Should it be applied as a standing crop, as a pelleted supplement, or even as individual doses?

There is much interest from the farming industry in hoping that AgResearch can provide such recipes in future -- for natural, on-farm added value to New Zealand's meat.

Bill Rumball is with AgResearch Grasslands.