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Guy at the meat counter told his kid "the redder the better" and I just stood there holding my pork butt
I was picking up some boneless butts at the Kroger over on Cherry Street last Tuesday and this older fella next to me pointed at the case and told his son to always grab the reddest beef because that means it's fresh. I didn't say anything but it bugged me the whole drive back to the shop. Color on beef is mostly about how long it sat in oxygen, not how fresh it is. A steak that's brown in the middle of the case can be just as good, sometimes better if it was aged right. I've had guys bring back meat that turned brown in their fridge after one day and swear I sold them spoiled product when it was just myoglobin doing its thing. I get why people think this way since that's what they were told for 40 years, but it does make my job harder. How do you all handle it when a customer swears the color means something it doesn't?
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faith_schmidt7d ago
The red color thing is mostly about myoglobin meeting oxygen, but it's not the whole story. Meat that stays bright red for a long time in the case can actually be a sign it was treated with carbon monoxide gas, which locks in that cherry red look no matter how old it is. Fresh cut beef will turn brown after a few days of air contact, and that browning is normal, not spoilage. So the old guy wasn't wrong that red matters, he just had the reason backwards.
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