Honors College Senior Thesis Presentations
When Cooking Sous Vide, Do Different Bags Change the Color Reading of the Spectrophotometer?
Academic Level at Time of Presentation
Senior
Major
Animal Science, Food Animal Emphasis
List all Project Mentors & Advisor(s)
Dr. Thomas Powell
Presentation Format
Oral Presentation
Abstract/Description
Meat color changes over the course of cooking and storage, this color is a key indicator of the safety and quality. Companies for many years now have been measuring the color changes of meats when both cooking and storing over a period of time. When it comes to packaging there are two ways to measure color, through the packaging or by taking the meat out and measuring. The big benefit of cooking with sous vide is that the water bath cooks the meat in a uniform manner so every part of the meat is getting cooked to the same temperature. This allows for the meat to be consistently cooked throughout without some areas getting done before others. The purpose of this project is to see how different kinds of film cooking bags affect color measurements when cooking meat via sous vide. I will be using a Hunter Miniscan EZ portable spectrophotometer (HunterLab, Reston, Virginia). The light transmission of two types of bags (“freezer” and “storage”) from three common brands (FoodSaver™, Ziploc™, and Great Value™) will be measured at different temperatures and cooking time to see how much the package changes as it is heated. This will be done by calibrating the spectrophotometer to black and white tile standards. I will use the HunterLab portable spectrophotometer. A spectrophotometer is an instrument that measures the amount of photons (the intensity of light) absorbed after it passes through a sample solution. The HunterLab spectrophotometer identifies a color's numerical values on three axes: L (light/dark), a (red/green) and b (blue/yellow). This will help to show future researchers what bags change the least in color or if they change at all, and when they are doing experiments, are they able to calibrate the spectrophotometer on a non-cooked bag, or do they have to cook a base bag with the bag that the meat is in to calibrate the spectrophotometer correctly.
Fall Scholars Week 2023 Event
Honors College Senior Thesis Presentations
When Cooking Sous Vide, Do Different Bags Change the Color Reading of the Spectrophotometer?
Meat color changes over the course of cooking and storage, this color is a key indicator of the safety and quality. Companies for many years now have been measuring the color changes of meats when both cooking and storing over a period of time. When it comes to packaging there are two ways to measure color, through the packaging or by taking the meat out and measuring. The big benefit of cooking with sous vide is that the water bath cooks the meat in a uniform manner so every part of the meat is getting cooked to the same temperature. This allows for the meat to be consistently cooked throughout without some areas getting done before others. The purpose of this project is to see how different kinds of film cooking bags affect color measurements when cooking meat via sous vide. I will be using a Hunter Miniscan EZ portable spectrophotometer (HunterLab, Reston, Virginia). The light transmission of two types of bags (“freezer” and “storage”) from three common brands (FoodSaver™, Ziploc™, and Great Value™) will be measured at different temperatures and cooking time to see how much the package changes as it is heated. This will be done by calibrating the spectrophotometer to black and white tile standards. I will use the HunterLab portable spectrophotometer. A spectrophotometer is an instrument that measures the amount of photons (the intensity of light) absorbed after it passes through a sample solution. The HunterLab spectrophotometer identifies a color's numerical values on three axes: L (light/dark), a (red/green) and b (blue/yellow). This will help to show future researchers what bags change the least in color or if they change at all, and when they are doing experiments, are they able to calibrate the spectrophotometer on a non-cooked bag, or do they have to cook a base bag with the bag that the meat is in to calibrate the spectrophotometer correctly.