Making the perfect piece of meat: The Maillard Reaction

It’s steak night! You get to your local grocery store and pick out a beautiful piece of ribeye steak. You pull up a recipe and get cooking but a thought crosses your mind - what actually is responsible for the perfect piece of steak? Is it Gordan Ramsay type culinary skills, the fattiest piece of meat or maybe the type of grill you use? Well, a little bit of all that and a whole lot of chemistry. Chemistry is taking place every single day, all around us in all of our kitchens.

When cooking meat, the majority of that juicy rich flavour you’re biting into is actually coming from its aroma. There are thousands of chemical compounds responsible for the appeal of meat – some are responsible for flavour and some are responsible for aroma. Then there are compounds that are responsible for BOTH. These are the compounds that interact with the taste receptors located on the taste buds of our tongue – and keep us wanting more.

Let’s take a dive into the chemistry of this. When you cook a piece of pork or beef, this frying process involving heat triggers two main reactions: The Maillard Reaction and Lipid Oxidation.

The Maillard reaction, is a marriage between carbohydrates and amino acids at a temperature above 120 degrees Celsius. This is what causes that characteristic browning of cooked meats and produces aromas so delightful, they make our stomachs growl.

When you cook this piece of meat, it’s not just the Maillard reaction that occurs. Lipid oxidation takes place as well where the fats in the meat start to oxidize, creating scrumptious aromas that make your nose tingle.

That meat flavor that we know and love consists of the basic tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter but the reason why meat is so irresistible is because it’s packed with the “fifth taste” umami. Three substances are responsible for the umami taste: glutamate (think soy sauce, meats, parmesan cheese), inosinate (found in meats and fish) and guanylate (imagine dried mushrooms).

Humans love umami. We have been programmed from birth to like umami with us swimming around in amniotic fluid filled with glutamate. Some scientists also believe that the umami taste also subconsciously signals to us that the meat has been sufficiently cooked and is now safe to consume.

The thousands of compounds that are formed during cooking are responsible for the different meat flavours mentioned above. What is interesting is that these two reactions aren’t mutually exclusive. Both Maillard reaction and Lipid oxidation products interact with each other and form these compounds that are responsible for this hearty meaty flavour.

We wont bother with the specific classes of compounds because we know it’s hard on the tongue but we can assure you at least it tastes good!