An Experimental Study of the Freeze-Drying of Raw Beef

Abstract
Freeze-drying curves for small sticks of beef are presented and it was found that in many cases the specimen weight was accurately represented by a quadratic function of the time. In many runs the drying was interrupted and the cross-section of the ice core was measured, after which the freeze-drying was completed. A graph showing ice-core diameter versus percent of water (including ice) remaining in the specimen is given, showing that the ice core does not disappear until the water content has been reduced to about 1% of the original weight (about 4% of the dry weight). It is therefore impractical to stop the freeze-drying process at a higher water content in order to permit compression without crumbling. The required moisture could be left in the meat but it will not be uniformly distributed; the wet core will affect product quality adversely.

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