I pulled about 5 pounds of chuck roast from my freezer a couple of days ago to thaw for Mississippi Pot Roast.
I watched sadly as more and more myoglobin accumulated in the bags. When I went to prep the roast this morning, I drained off the myoglobin and weighed it - 295 grams. or almost 12% of the total weight.
I’ve never measured this before, but then, I’ve never seen this much purge come out. Hopefully my pot roast won’t be super dry…
I think here’s why. Late last year I broke down about 40 pounds of chuck (which is where these 2 roasts came from), and sirloin. I had a lot of stuff going on at the time and rather than keeping any of it in the fridge for use that week, I labeled and packaged it all and threw it all in the freezer at the same time, probably about 35 pounds trimmed.
So, I basically overwhelmed my freezer, which means it took a long time to freeze, which means larger ice crystals = more damage to the muscle.
I’m not looking forward to pulling out more of the chuck, or any of the sirloin.
Don’t be me.
If you’ve got a lot of stuff to freeze, do it in stages… I’m pretty sure I knew all of this stuff back in the back of my murky brain, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.
LoL - FWPs!
