Freezing

Obviously, it’s better to use Fresh rather than Frozen.

Most domestic freezing happens slowly, and this brings with it an issue:

When foods are frozen slowly shards of ice begin to form inside the meat, these grow as the freezing progresses and eventually the shards pierce the cell walls creating a rupture.

The ruptures become evident when the item defrosts and you can see liquid coloured with Red Myoglobin, leaking from the meat.

If you “Snap Freeze” the ice shards that form are much smaller and this cellular rupture damage is minimised.

While it has not been proven yet, there is a school of thought that freezing the water molecules in a protein will facilitate the process of denaturing.

This is good news for Low N Slow and, a lot of pit masters do indeed freeze their meats before a competition.

At temperatures above – 20 ℃ (-4°F), biochemical reactions can still occur.

So you will get some oxidisation of the meat and fats, the colour will degrade and ageing continues albeit very slowly.

For this reason, I don’t recommend freezing for more than 6 months.

It’s also a good idea to eliminate contact with the air by sealing the meat in a vacuum sealed package.