Chapter 15 — Further Reading

Resources organized by depth. Mix of books, papers, and videos.

Beginner

Kenji López-Alt, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science (Norton, 2015), Chapter 6: "Beef, Pork, and Lamb." Kenji's experimental, results-driven home-cook guide to meat. Indispensable for the home cook; he tests and re-tests every claim and shows the data. The book that has done more than any other to debunk the searing-seals-in-juices myth in popular cooking culture.
Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (Simon & Schuster, 2017), Heat chapter and the meat sections of Salt and Fat. Less data-driven than Kenji, more sensorially attuned. A great companion read for the home cook who wants the texture and feel of cooking meat.
Meathead Goldwyn, Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). The barbecue side of the same chemistry, written with myth-busting energy. Especially good on the chemistry of smoke, the stall, and the long brisket cook.

Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd edition (Scribner, 2004), Chapter 3: "Meat." The canonical reference. McGee's chapter on meat has been the foundation for almost every popular treatment since. Deeper than the home-cook guides; clearer than the academic ones. If you read only one secondary source on meat science, read this.
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking* (Myhrvold, Bilet, Young; The Cooking Lab, 2011), Volume 3: "Animals and Plants." The molecular-gastronomy reference, with extensive treatment of meat structure, sous vide, and modern cookery. Expensive, but available in most major libraries and food-science departments. The diagrams alone are worth study.
Antonio J. Bertolini and Jeff W. Savell, "Beef Color, Aging, and Fabrication," in Lawrie's Meat Science, 8th edition (R. A. Lawrie & D. A. Ledward, eds., Woodhead Publishing, 2017). A textbook chapter (in a textbook used by meat-science programs) that goes into the chemistry of myoglobin states, color management, and aging in industrial detail. For the food-science student.
The Serious Eats food-lab archives, online (seriouseats.com). Kenji's and others' essays on meat-related topics — reverse sear, the food safety of pink pork, brining, and many others — go into more depth than the book and are continuously updated.

Lawrie's Meat Science, 8th edition (Lawrie & Ledward, eds., Woodhead Publishing, 2017). The graduate-level reference textbook for meat science. Covers muscle structure, post-mortem chemistry, processing technologies, microbiology, and quality. Dense, exhaustive, the standard text in academic food science.
F. Toldrá, ed., Handbook of Fermented Meat and Poultry (Wiley-Blackwell, 2nd ed., 2014). For the side of meat science that overlaps with fermentation — cured meats, dry-cured ham, sausages, and the microbiology that makes them work. Deeply technical.
Belitz, Grosch, and Schieberle, Food Chemistry, 4th edition (Springer, 2009), Chapter 12: "Meat." Graduate-level food chemistry treatment, with kinetics, denaturation thermodynamics, and the chemistry of color and flavor compounds. For students with a chemistry background.

Kenji López-Alt's YouTube channel (J. Kenji López-Alt). Many short videos on meat science topics — searing, reverse sear, sous vide, the brisket stall, ground meat safety — with experimental demonstrations. Visual and immediate.
"Steak — How to Cook Steak Perfectly," ChefSteps (YouTube). A clear introduction to sous vide steak with the underlying science explained. ChefSteps's library overall is a good resource for the precision-temperature side of meat cookery.
Alton Brown, Good Eats (television series, multiple episodes on beef, pork, lamb, and chicken). Older but still useful; Alton's strength is making the chemistry visible and memorable in a cooking-show format.

Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay, Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto (Ten Speed Press, 2015). A working pitmaster's account of low-and-slow brisket cookery. Less science than craft, but a window onto how a master practitioner thinks about the very long cook.
Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat (Basic Books, 2012). Cultural and technological history including chapters relevant to meat cookery — the open hearth, the spit, the modern oven, the food safety thermometer, sous vide. Excellent context for why we cook meat the way we do today.
Various culinary memoirs from non-Western traditions (e.g., Fuchsia Dunlop on Sichuan cooking, Madhur Jaffrey on Indian cooking, Andrea Nguyen on Vietnamese cooking) include extensive treatment of meat in those traditions. Reading widely across culinary traditions helps a student see the universals — collagen conversion, Maillard browning, brining — beneath the surface differences of seasoning and technique.