GB2051550A - Method of cooking meat - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for producing high juice-weight retention, and other improvements, in cooked meat by deep-frying the uncooked meat in e.g. hamburger steak, liquid stocks of the same phase and selected flavor and color equivalents as its own cooked juices, at temperatures under 212 DEG F. A deep-frying apparatus suitable for the purpose is disclosed (Fig. 1). <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION Method of cooking meat This invention is concerned with the reduction and/or elimination of juice loss in cooked meats of approximately 1-inch, or less, in thickness, in such items as steaks, chops, and particularly meat patties; and with other deficiencies in this field of art.

All temperatures used herein are on the Fahrenheit scale.

Cooking meat is the process of treating it with heat. Or, more precisely for the purposes of this invention, cooking meat is the process of exchanging low temperature heat energy in the meat with higher temperature heat energy in the heating media.

The USDA and FDA require that for standard toxic safety the internal temperature of cooked meat be at least 140 ; and for marginal safety it be at least 128 . Thus for this invention "uncooked meat" is meat that has not reached an internal temperature of 128 .

Because the consumption of beef patties, better known as hamburgers, far exceeds the consumption of all other meat patties combined, I will use hamburgers to illustrate, describe, and claim the processes and methods of this invention. It is to be understood, however, that the invention applies to various cuts, steaks, chops, and patties made from beef, veal, pork, lamb, and poultry. Patties from such meats are fabricated from raw meat by grinding, chipping, flaking, chopping, comminuting, molding, pressing, forming, and/or a combination of two or more of these methods of meat patty fabrication. Some of the items fabricated from beef and/or veal are shaped to resemble rib or lion steaks and are called by such names as chip steaks, flake steaks, engineered steaks, shaped steaks, cubed steaks, formed steaks, etc.Of all the various meat patties, steaks, and chops produced, there is one item that far outnumbers and outsells all the others combined: the hamburger. Therefore, the hamburger patty will be used as the exemplary item in this disclosure. It may be of any peripheral configuration. It is generally either round or square, 3 to 6 inches wide, and 1/8 to 2-inch thick.

More specifically, my invention will use for its exemplary item the hamburgers served in the fast-food chain-store type of restaurant. My invention is applicable for both the home and all commercial (restaurants, hotels, institutions) segments of the hamburger market. But the fastfood chain-store group within the commercial segment of the market has special, uniquely different and difficult, hamburger preparation problems not encountered in other groups or segments of the meat-cookery field. This group has critically important pressing demands for speed, simplicity, and uniformity that add heavier burdens to the burden already imposed by the major problem of juice-weight loss. The reason for selecting the hamburgers of this group as exemplary is because they have the most difficult combination of problems in hamburger and fabricated meat-patty cookery.If my invention can provide a solution to the juice-loss problem for this group, then the same solution would apply to the same problem in the other groups.

A hamburger is popularly and generically understood to be a cooked patty of ground beef. If certain qualifying terms are used in connection with its advertising and sale, then USDA legal specifications must be observed. For example: if it is called "ground beef," "chopped beef," or "hamburger" then its fat content can be no more than 30% by weight.This legal limitation on fat content is important in this invention because (1) the fat is one of the flavor-imparting ingredients of hamburger-meat juices that (2) is largely intercellular (not cellularly entrapped) so that (3) as it begins liquifying early in the cooking process at temperatures of around 110" it easily becomes part of the cooked meat-juice complex within the meat and (4) in this liquid phase its globules will float on and/or within the meat-juice complex, and (5) be carried out and lost with juice that is excreted, carmelized, evaporated, and/or burnt during the high-heat priorart cooking processes. Therefore the greater the fat content, the greater will be the juice-weight loss (all other things being equal) in prior-art cookery.For this reason, among others, the better quality fast-food hamburger chains keep the fat content of their hamburgers under 20%.

Frying and boiling are the two methods normally employed by the prior-art for cooking hamburgers. Frying uses the metal surfaces of pans or griddles on which to lay and cook meat.

Broiling uses direct-close-contact exposure of the meat to the source of radiant heat, as on an open-surfaced gridiron over live coals, gas flames, or electric rods. Both of them apply heats to the meat far in excess of the 212 boiling point of water; the point at which water changes and expands from a liquid to a gaseous (steam) phase, and in the process breaks meat cell structure and purges cellular-held juice out of the meat. Both of them may be termed dry-cooking systems because they both expose their cooking hamburgers to a dry, air and/or metal, source of heat.

Another classification of frying called "deep frying" uses the distinguishing prefix "deep" to indicate that the frying is done in a quantity of liquid fat of a sufficient depth so that the cooking food can be deeply immersed therein (i.e., surrounded, covered, and enclosed by and within said liquid); also at temperatures far in excess of 212". In "deep frying" as herein understood, the food and the liquid are in direct physical contact with each other, with no barrier of any kind between them to prevent this direct physical contact. Use of this classification of frying has heretofore been avoided by the prior-art because, among other reasons, immersion in liquid fat produces objectionable flavors.

In the process of cooking a hamburger there is a change of flavor and color from the raw to the cooked state. The cooked flavor is delectable to man's taste, and thus is beneficial nutritionally and esthetically. The color changes from red to pink to gray-brown as cooking heat increases and the doneness levels change from rare to medium to well-done. The flavor carrier is the meat's juices which are largely derived from the blood and water complex within the meat.

Total water content of the entire meat cellular complex (including the blood) is between 70% and 80%.

Beef blood, or serum, itself is composed of about 55% by volume of blood plasma and 45% of several hundred biochemical, nutrient and waste substances in various stages and levels of hydrolysis, synthesis, and/or decomposition. The plasma itself is a water solution whose principal function is to transport both the dissolved and undissolved substances that are part of the blood composition. The plasma is by volume about 91% water, and, in solution, 7% protein material, 0.9% mineral salts, and 1.1% of the substances previously mentioned. Thus of the total blood content about 50% (55% of 91%) is water and 50% of the substances previously mentioned which, along with water outside the blood proper, brings the total water content of the entire cellular complex up to between 70% and 80%.This high water-level is a critical consideration to an understanding of this invention because (1) water is the main constituent and carrier of the proteinaceous liquid substance known as beef juice, and (2) it maintains within the temperature parameters of 32 and 212 the fluid-liquid (in distinction to the fluidgaseous) phase of this substance. In beef cookery the definition of beef juice is enlarged to include the entire blood complex (plasma and undissolved substances) plus the fat rendered liquid by cooking heats. This is the unique combination of substances that provides the flavors and nutrition that makes beef juice both delectable to man's taste and nutritional for his body.

This "beef juice" (with or without added water, flavorings, color, and/or preservatives in its ingredient content) is also called "beef stock" and "beef broth," when it is used as a flavor additive for foods.

Hamburger cookery is a centuries-old art. Its commercialization in the USA began around the turn of the century. But that segment of the commercial market known as fast-food is only about 40 years old. At the wolesale level, the total annual quantity of beef sold for hamburgers, both domestic and commercial, is currently around 7.2-billion pounds, which at a wholesale price of $1.25 per pound represents about $9-billion.

The phenomenonal growth in fast-food commercialization of hamburgers during the past twenty years rapidly escalated the number and intensity of the cookery problems in this field.

Factual evidence of this in the large number of patents for hamburger cookery granted during this period. Of the patents issued during the past 50 years, approximately 85% were issued during the latest 20 years; the years of the 1 960's and the 1 970's to date. Then, sharply indicative of the special problems of fast-food is the fact that about 80% of these recent-decade patents were concerned with mechanical apparatuses for increasing the cooking speed while controlling the uniformity of the cooked hamburger. This high percentage of patents on mechanical methods and means give credence to the thought that the pressing demand of the hamburger industry was for inventions on speed and uniformity rather than on the other problems covered by the remaining 20%.

However, despite the quality and quantity of the novelty displayed in these patents, two important facts should be remembered in the context of this invention: (1) all of them were mainly of a mechanical nature, and (2) none of them made any basic departure from the two accepted cookery methods of hot-metal-contact frying and radiant-heat broiling. The prior-art practitioners were literally committed to the basic mechanical heat-exchange movements of these two standard cookery methods.They had mechanical apparatuses that (1) moved cooking hamburgers on horizontal, vertical, and/or diagonal planes; with belts, rollers and/or push bars, (2) against stationary, rotating, and/or sliding grills, (3) into direct and/or indirect contact with the meat from one and/or two sides with (4) heat emission sources supplied by gas flames and/or electric heating elements that produced radiant, conductive, and/or convection heats on and/or in the hamburger. Their statements of objectives in these patents were filled with such phrases as "efficient production," "high production rates," "uniformity," "even heating," "uniform penetration of heat," "easy cleaning," "elimination of smoke, burnt drippings, noxious fumes, greasy flavors, scorching, spattered grease, sticking, carcinogenic carbon, disagreeable tastes," etc.

All of these objectives indicated a need for speed, uniformity in the cooked product, elimination of disagreeable cookery by-products, and/or reduction of the human element in the cookery process. These are worthy objectives. A few inventions did indeed fulfill them. Many of them did not. Many more were too complicated to be practical. Some were actually harmful to the cooked hamburger. But all of them were locked into the methods of metal-contact frying and/or flame or electric broiling.

In addition to the primary and clearly-stated objectives in the prior-art, about 20% of that art contained secondary and ambiguously-stated objectives that alleged some kind of reduction in loss of juice and/or flavor. These objectives were contained in such phrases as: "without loss of flavor or juices," "seal in juices and flavor," "without shrinkage or juice evaporation," "prevents excessive loss of meat juices," "retaining most of the meat juices," etc. Actually these objectives were simply allegations; just wishful thinking without proof, and nothing more.

There are no patented claims and/or empirical evidence showing actual percentages that any of them did, or could, reduce the high level of juice and flavor loss that still exists in the fast-food hamburger business. Thus there is no substantive showing in the prior-art of either a definitive effort or a definitive result on a reduction in hamburger juice loss.

The juice-weight loss in fast-food hamburgers from the raw weight to the cooked weight, normally ranges between 25% and 33%. Using the lowest percentage for the entire industry average, this loss amounts to about 2.25-billion pounds, or $2.8-billion annually. This is the nutritional and monetary magnitude of just one item in the juice-loss problem that is the central concern of this invention.

The hamburger industry has also exerted a tremendous amount of time, energy, and capital expenditures on mechanical methods and means for changing primal beef meat itself into various meat bodies and/or textures used in hamburger meat patties. The prior patented art shows a great out-pouring of inventions in this area commencing in the early 1 960's and steadily increasing in numbers to the present date. Some measure of the huge volume of thought given to problems in this area is provided by the following twenty-eight descriptive words used in the titles and abstracts of these inventions: preparing, processing, making, producing, forming, compacting, cutting, mixing, grinding, chopping, comminuting, dispensing, charging, extruding, shaping, stacking, separating, portioning, dividing, compressing, stuffing, machining, slicing, depositing, pressing, removing, segmenting, knitting, etc.But not a single one of the inventions gave the slightest thought to retaining the ground-meat texture and/or restructure it specifically and most importantly to (1) reduce cooking juice-weight loss and then (2) attain an internal uniform well-done doneness level in the cooked meat and (3) achieve (1) and (2) within the cooking time limitations of the fast-food industry.

Thus, as noted, the fast-food hamburger industry has bestirred itself greatly with all the numerous problems and deficiencies with which it has been plagued in producing and cooking hamburger meat, except the greatest and most stubborn problem of all, namely, the enormous loss of juice. With this problem of juice loss the advancement of the art has been zero. At one time all the various prior-art cookery problems were also objectives of my research, but the juiceloss problem over-rode all the others in the magnitude of both its nutritional importance and its resistance to a cure. Therefore, I made the problem of juice loss not only the central concern, but the sole concern of this invention.

It is therefore the overall, central, and sole objective of this invention to substantially reduce or eliminate this juice-weight loss while conforming to the doneness levels and cooking times of the fast-food industry. All other objectives that inadvertently might be achieved are simply contributory, accessory, circumjacent, and/or ancillary to the sole objective.

A prerequisite to the solution of any problem is an articulation of it. The following paragraphs endeavour to supply such an articulation.

It appeared from the long-standing existence of the problem that a solution to it certainly was extremely difficult. It even appeared that part of the overall objective to reduce to zero, or nearly so, this juice-weight loss in hamburgers was even impossible. The solution initially appeared even more impossible when I considered including in my research all the special needs of the big fast-food hamburger chains for speed, simplicity, uniformity, and all their other special problems. Such added research burdens made a full overall solution appear completely beyond attainment. However, even though I decided to limit my concern solely to juice-weight loss, solutions for the entire range of problems still remained with me as objectives to pursue at some later time.

Critically important to the solution of any problem is an understanding of the basic factors producing the problem; i.e., what is the case of the problem. Such basic knowledge of the factors causing the juice-loss problem apparently has been lacking in the hamburger-cooking industry throughout it's prior history. At least there is no evidence in the prior-art to indicate a knowledgeable understanding of the basic phenomena associated with juice loss in hamburger cookery, much less using it as a reference in solving the problem.

As is customary with problems like that of hamburger juice loss that stubbornly resist an answer, the research often engages in "wild" or "impossible" experiments; probing for solutions that appear empirically "impossible" but not impossible in the light of scientificallyaccepted theory; theory that presumably postulates the causes. I also engaged in many such experiments, but there is no record of the prior-art doing so. It was fortunate that I did because, as will become evident as the description proceeds, the final all-embracing solution disclosed in this invention is in the fullest sense an "impossible" happenstance discovery because it went contrary to existing empirical data; but still a possible discovery because it did not go contrary to basic physical laws.

Because the prior-art did not know the causes of the juice-loss problems, it is understandable why the problem wasn't solved. But it is not understandable why the prior-art didn't probe for basic causes by using the basic references provided by proven physical laws. In view of the dynamic growth in the fast-food hamburger industry and its financial strength, it is surprising that it has continued to live for so long with the huge nutritional and economic losses from juice loss. It is even more surprising that the elementary organo-physical laws governing the causes of juice loss were not knowledgeably obvious to the prior-art practitioners.Since knowledge of these laws is available to everyone in standard texts on physics, physiology, and biochemistry, the surprising essence of this invention must then also reside in the non-obviousness of the seemingly obvious when viewed in hindsight.

Such knowledge is germane to an understanding of the problem and the development of this invention before proceeding to specific descriptions of the discoveries. It is provided in the following brief and simplified descriptions of the basic phenomena associated with hamburger cookery.

The progression of sub-titled paragraphs that follow describe in orderly sequence the development of thought, factors, and considerations impinging on and leading to the solution of the juice-loss problem in hamburger cookery.

Basic to any physical problem is matter itself. In its universal application, and for the purpose of the invention, matter is simply defined as the substance (material, constituents, elements, organic and/or inorganic) of which a physical object is composed. Matter comes in different states. In its fundamental connotation the "states of matter" refer to the condition of a substance; as its state of aggregation, which may be solid, liquid, or gaseous--compact or dispersed.

A given substance may be transformed into all three of the states of matter. Such transformed states are known as phases of the substance. For example, water as a liquid is in its liquid phase, ice is its solid phase, steam is its gaseous phase. Its liquid and gaseous phases are classified as fluid masses and have the qualities of mobility and ambiency. Its solid phase is a stationary mass, immobile and non-ambient.

Basic to any understanding of the cause and then prescribing a cure for a problem involving matter is a knowledge of the basic laws and phenomena governing such matter. Unless such knowledge is present in the analysis of a problem, it is improbable that either the cause or the cure will be found. Since my invention is concerned with the loss of matter (juice) in a mass of matter called a hamburger, I must consult and honor the laws that govern the conservation of matter. Without these laws as a reference, it is inconceivable that one could even make a start toward understanding the nature of the hamburger juice-loss problem, much less offer a cure.

The basic law of reference governing the behaviour of the "phrases" of matter is the law of conservation of mass-energy equivalence, which simply equates a quantity of mass to a quantity of energy. Subordinate laws are: (1) the laws of conservation of energy which states that when two or more particles of matter interact the total energy (kinetic and potential) is always constant, and (2) the law of conservation of mass, which has been put in the form that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. A statement more understandable to a layman would be that the total mass of any system remains constant under all transformations; as for example, the mass-energy of a given mass of water (liquid) remains constant regardless of its transformation from its ice (solid) or steam (gaseous) phases.

An important function of the conservation laws is that they allow prediction about the behaviour of a substance without going into the mechanical details of what happens during the course of a transformation from one phase to another phase. The laws provide a direct conservation-connection between the state of the substances before the transformation and the state after the transformation. Also, one may conclude that any action (mechanical), chemical, and/or thermal) which upsets one of the conservation laws must be forbidden, particularly if one wishes to converse (retain) a substance in a given state and/or phase. Thus if one wishes to conserve the liquid phase of juice within a hamburger, any cooking system which acts in violation of such a conservation must be forbidden, and some other system must be found that will effectuate and maintain this conservation. Such laws, then, are the causal basic which set the guidelines that must be honored if juices in hamburgers are to be conserved.

The basic question then becomes: what kind of system, if any, could retain within a cooked hamburger patty both (1) it's original juice-mass (weight) and (2) the heat energy to which it was subjected in cooking. This question with its dual concerns describes in basic terms the leading overall objective of this invention. Or, to state the objective another way: to discover a system for cooking hamburgers which will conserve the uncooked liquid-phase hamburger juiceweight energy of the same phase and weight in the cooked hamburger.

My search for such a system was preceded by a knowledgeable recognition of the basic reference of conservation of mass-energy as it operates with and through the associated methods, means, and systems that have a bearing on the substance (hamburger meat) of our problem. With such an approach the causes of, and a solution to, the problem finally surfaced.

There is no evidence in the prior-art of such a knowledgeable recognition and/or use of such references, and so it is understandable why the prior-art has not produced an answer to the problem. In distinction to the prior-art, the teachings herein will openly and continually explain the reference of conservation of mass-energy as it operates with and through the associated methods, means, and systems that have a bearing on the substance (hamburger meat) of our problem. With such an approach the causes of, and a solution to, the problem finally surfaced.

There is no evidence in the prior-art of such a knowledgeable recognition and/or use of such references, and so it is understable why the prior-art has not produced an answer to the problem. In distinction to the prior-art, the teachings herein will openly and continually explain the references used to reach the overall objective.

In using the basic laws of conservation as the reference it is necessary to recognize (1) that the methods and means through which these laws operate in cooling hamburgers are heat exchanges (2) involving the laws governing fluide (gas and liquid) systems, and (3) that the substance (hamburger) to be cooked has certain histo-bio-chemical functional structures peculiarly generic to muscle systems.

For this recognition, the basic reference is best understood if the two equivalent parts of massenergy are considered separately as an exchange of energy and as an exchange of mass, as follows: 1. The problem of heat (gaseous)-energy exchange and/or transfer, between a cold hamburger and a hot heat source.

This is basically a problem of energy exchange by conduction-diffusion and/or radiation-waves because these two energy carrier systems can transmit and/or exchange energy without the physical movement of mass.

The physical and organic worlds are replete with evidence that practically all mass-energy systems have heat ranges within which they can exchange heats with other masses having unlike heats without a visibly noticeable change in state, or phase, and/or a loss of weight; e.g., within the temperature range of 32 to 212 water can exchange heat with a heating element without any immediate or substantial change in its state or loss of its weight.Most living and newly-deceased organisms of the animal (e.g., hamburger meat) and vegetable world also have a relatively wide range of temperatures within which they can exist and exchange temperatures (BTU's) with an ambient atmosphere having a temperature considerably different from the organism's normal temperature; and do this without a noticeable change in the state and/or weight of the organism.

Thus it appears theoretically reasonable that such a heat exchange could also take place in the cooking of a hamburger; that a hamburger theoretically could be cooked without a substantial, if any, loss in juice-weight. If so, then why hasn't the theory been reduced to practice? Why haven't the prior-art practitioners done this? Has it been an insurmountable problem for them? These questions with their absence of answers constitute one of the most baffling aspects of the prior-art. It is incredible that the huge, wealthy, and presumably scientifically-resourceful companies operating in the fast-food hamburger industry have failed to solve the problem of juice-weight loss.Whatever the reasons for this failure, the tremendous economic and nutritional losses should have been a compelling influence to find a solution; if not for their self-interest, then at least for the benefit of their customers and out Nation at large.

It is a specific and primary objective of this invention, therefore, to device methods and means for cooking hamburgers whereby functional properties of conduction and/or radiation will be limited to roles that are beneficial, and not harmful, for the juice-retention quality of the hamburgers.

2. The problem of mass-weight exchange and/or transfer between a cold hamburger and a hot heat source.

This is basically a problem of energy exchange by convection because convection transmits and/or exchanges energy by and through the physical movement of mass.

There is no evidence in the prior-art that the physical laws of conservation of mass-energy and the use of convection for the exchange and/or transfer of heats were ever given a serious and sustained analytical and/or comparative examination. In fact, the evidence is open and abundant that these laws, and/or an alternate mechanics for heat exchange, were completely ignored. The de facto evidence appears obvious that the prior practitioners in the fast-food hamburger industry believed that in order to acquire hot-heat energy fast the cooking hamburger had to release (give up) some of its mass (juice-weight).These practitioners apparently have been so mesmerized with the need for operational speed, simplicity, and uniformity, they gave no serious consideration to placing first on their research agendas the increased nutritional, flavor, and economic values that would come with greater juice-weight retention. The evidence is indisputable that in the prior-art cooking of hamburgers the law governing the conservation of mass-energy produced a high degree of one-way streets or transfers along which unlike states or phases of mass-energy moved; namely the exit of mass (liquid-phase weight) out of the hamburger in exchange for the entry of hot temperature relatively weightless (gaseous-state) heat energy into the hamburger.Despite the prolixity of the patented prior-art, no way had been found for the desired speed in the exchange of energy (heat) without a transfer that sacrificed at least 25% of the mass (juice-weight).

The consideration of a true exchange of energy on a like-energy for a like-energy, like-phase for like-phase, basis; i.e., same mass for same mass, liquid for a liquid, gas for a gas, radiant waves for radiant waves, apparently had never been seriously studied; i.e., in terms of the underlying physical laws governing heat exchange.

It therefore becomes a further specific primary objective of this invention to provide a method and means for cooking hamburgers by which the hot heats from the heating source are exchanged via convection with the cold heats of the raw hamburger without the cooked hamburger showing any substantial juice-weight loss from its uncooked weight.

A noted above the mechanics of conservation in food cooking functions via the mechanics of heat exchange systems. All the solids, liquids, and gases in cooking food are subject to such a heat exchange. In hamburger cookery the low-temperature heats in the cold meat are exchanged for the high-temperature heats generated by and/or through the cooking appliances. In the prior hamburger art this exchange always results in some of the mass-energy in the meat changing its phase; for example, meat juices changing from a liquid to a steam (gaseous) phase, whereby considerable juice is transferred out of the meat and is lost as its gaseous weight is absorbed in the air (gas) of the atmosphere. In this phenomena the total mass-energy remains constant, but so far as the hamburger is concerned its initial mass-energy is considerably reduced, normally losing at least 25% of its weight.For the prior-art hamburger the heat-exchange mechanisms produce a net transfer of mass-energy out of the hamburger into the open atmosphere rather than an equal weight exchange of mass-energy between the hamburger and the heat-producing apparatuses and/or cooking environment.

It is therefore a further objective of this invention to provide a heat-exchange mechanism that will promote an equal weight exchange of mass-energy between a hamburger and its cooking medium.

1. The cooking temperatures used in the mechanics of exchange by the various segments in prior-art commercial hamburger cookery include the following: (1) metal contact frying, broiling, flaming, and/or baking at temperature ranging from 250 to 700 , all temperatures far beyond the temperature at which water expands and gasifies into pressured steam; many of them heats at which surface meat tissue is is also reduced to dried solids and/or burnt powdered (solid particles) ash. (2) Direct gas-flame close-meat-contact system which heats upwards of 1200 at the point of emission; heats that quickly change meat surfaces, and some interior juices and tissues, into highly mobile steam-pressured meat-exiting gases and powdered carbon ash.

Despite the enormous juice losses, the fast-food hamburger chains apparently have felt their commitment to fast, speedy, service out-weighed in commercial important the economic and/or nutritional values that would be added from a reduction in juice losses. Despite this commitment to speed, the more quality-concerned fast-food practitioners have generally kept their cooking heats down around the 250 to 350 temperature range in an effort to minimize and/or reduce some of the deleterious effects products by higher temperatures. But some, in flagrant disregard of such deleterious effects, have gone to indirect flaming at 700 and higher; into the heats at which beef tissue undergoes almost instant combustion.One of the industry leaders actually going to a close-contact gas-flame at 1 200 C.

Regardless of the specific cooking heats used by prior-art practitioners all of their heats create the violent thermal shocks that produce the extreme hyperexcitement, cell contraction, cellbreaking, and cell-cramp-locking effects on beef's cellular structures that in turn, produce a correspondingly violent and almost instantaneous change in the state of hamburger juices from quiescent and stationary-but-movable fluid liquids to highly-pressured rapidly moving fluid gas (steam) and/or tightly locked-in immobilized liquids.

All of the cooking temperatures used in prior-art hamburger cookery are far above the 212 steam-producing level of water. Thus all the prior-art is constantly engaged in changing hamburger juice from the quiescent liquid phase of water into the expansion-pressured-meatexiting phase of steam.

It is a further object, therefore, to provide a hamburger cooking system that will cook hamburgers at temperatures under 21 2 C- and over the toxic danger point of 128 .

2. The heat-exchange systems Systems for exchanging cooking heats that have been used by prior-art hamburger cookery may be grouped under three classifications based on the manner by which their respective heats encompassed and/or were combined around the cooking meat. This manner of classification is used here because it relates directly to the ability of the fluid carriers to perform a true-like-phase for like-phase heat-exchange between the cooking meat and the cooking heat.

a. Liquid heat encompassing hamburgers Deep-frying in hot liquid oils or fats is an example of a heat-exchange system in which the liquid and its heat completely surrounds and encompasses, and is in direct physical contact with, the cooking hamburger from all sides and angles. There is no barrier between the bare raw meat and the hot liquid. The heat of the liquid is usually around 400 . This system would appear to have at least the advantage of being able to exchange the liquid-juice mass of the meat with another liquid mass (oil). Here then existed the opportunity of exchanging heat mass-energy on a like-for-like phase basis.

But this system has never been used on a commercial scale by the prior-art hamburger industry because results that (1) it produced inpalatable oily flavors in the hamburgers, and (2) it failed to accomplish a significant reduction in juice (mass) loss.

b. Gas heat encompassing hamburger Baking in a radiant-heat oven is an example of a heat-exchange system in which a heated gas (air) substantially surrounds and encompasses the cooking hamburger from all sides and angles if it rests on an open wire rack. This system has the advantage of confining its heat within a closed cavity which, though the heat is ambient, supplies all the surfaces of the cooking hamburger with fairly uniform temperatures. The heat is not subjected to cross-currents of uncontrolled variant-temperatured atmospheric air. And thus this system could be used to cook hamburgers at low (under 212') temperatures with a consequent reduction in juice-expelling heat-pressures.

However, this system has never been used on a large commercial scale by the prior-art because: (1) regardless of the cooking temperatures large juice-losses still occurred, and (2) it was operationally awkward and more costly in time and labor. However, apparently unknown to the prior-art, there was a more basic reason: there existed no possibility of exchanging heats between the hamburger and the cooking atmosphere on a like-phase for like-phase basis.

c. Gas heat not-encompassing hamburger Broiling (gridiron) and hot-metal-contact (griddle or grill) frying are the two primary examples of the cooking system that employs non-encompassing, open gas (air) atmosphere in which to cook hamburgers. Cooking is done at high (at least over 250 ) temperatures with the heat contacting the hamburgers from only one or two sides at a time leaving the other surfaces exposed to the ambient non-heat confined (non-encompassing specific heat) variable-heat atmosphere.

Since the heats of this system are (1) open to an ambient (not closed or confined) atmosphere, and (2) this atmosphere is a gas (air), there is no way in which an exchange of heat-mass energy can take place on a like-for-like phase basis between the juice-mass in a hamburger and the heat-energy in the atmosphere. The unlike phase exchange of energy requires a liquid (juice) phase to leave the hamburger in exchange for the entry of a gaseous (air and/or radiant-wave) phase into the hamburger.

Since this is the cooking system classification used by all prior-art practitioners of fast-food hamburger cookery, a brief examination of the rationale for such universal use is in order here.

If the system produced a hamburger with high-level juice retention this would be a sufficient rationale for its use. But its doesn't do this.

When asked to supply a quality rationale on why this system is their choice, prior-art practitioners could not give a firm reply.

For example: (a) There are some who argue uneasily (i.e. without firm knowledge) that the reason is a better flavor because the high heats tend to open up the inner and outer surfaces of a hamburger and thus facilitate later release of flavor juices in the mouth. Actually there is no logic or empirical evidence to support such a position because opened meat surfaces relese flavor juices, and substantial quantities of juice-flavor are lost, long before the hamburger enters the mouth. As a matter of fact such meat is more likely to have a dry, carmelized, and/or burnt flavor. (b) There are others who take a contrary position. They allege that the high heats used in grilling and broiling keep and/or seal in the juices and flavor by cauterizing the surfaces of the meat.These statements directly contravene the open knowledge that these systems expel meat juice in large quantities. Thus the alleged cauterization does not accomplish the alleged purpose.

(c) Others argue simply that grilling in the open atmosphere "is the way it has always been done so, therefore, it must be the best way or it wouldn't be used." Such an argument is devoid of syllogistic logic, and doesn't even pretend to give a quality rationale.

It is obvious that the hamburger industry is confused in both its rationale on quality and how quality can be achieved. Therefore it is another object of this invention to provide a heatexchange system in which the heat-energy used for a cooking hamburger will be able to exchange heat-energy in a hamburger without the hamburger losing mass.

3. The heat transmission systems To enable heat exchange systems to function in food cookery there must be a modus operandi for transmitting and/or carrying the heats to be exchanged. There must be a heat transmission system within the exchange system. There are three well-known heat-transmission systems used in food cookery; all of them available to, and used in varying degrees, by, prior-art fast-food hamburger operators. These transmission systems all use fluid carriers: liquids, gases, and/or radiant waves to transmit and/or exchange heat. They are the following.

(1) conduction-which is the function of transmitting heat by diffusion through immobile materials such as beef tissues and fibers and/or stagnant juices; (2) radiation-which is the function of transmitting heat by radiant wave energy moving through ambient air, vapors, liquid, and/or permeable meat tissue; (3) convection-which is the function of transmitting heat by a fluid carrier (liquid or gas) actually travelling from one location to another location.

The prior-art use of these heat transmission systems is more fully described as follows: a. Conduction, is the action used to diffuse heat through immobile substances; substances that normally have greater densities than mobile (fluid) substances. Because of these characteristics, these immobile substances are relatively intractable to a fast acceptance of the cookingaccelerating influence of high heats. Conduction's responsibility for heating immobile substances normally would make it the slowest of the three functional mechanisms for cooking meat. One would assume, therefore, that the fast-food practitioners would not use conduction mechanics in their hamburger cookery. Such an assumption is completely contrary to the facts. Conduction is used; and used extensively.Despite the intractability of the meat to fast heat-acceptance via conduction's diffusion mechanics, the prior-art used high heats to force heat tractability upon a cooking hamburger in the interest of speed. But, by so doing, it also rapidly forces some otherwise relatively immobile cellular-trapped juices out of the hamburger, and splits open, desiccates, and/or burns some of the non-fluid tissues. The fluid, but relatively immobile, liquid phase of much of the trapped juice is rapidly transformed into its fluid and highly mobile gaseous (steam) phase; in which phase it can escape from its cellular entrapment and move into the outer atmosphere. In this process it is impossible to produce an exchange of energy on a like-for-like basis, i.e., heat-diffused energy for heat-diffused energy, gas-mass energy for gasmass energy, or liquid-mass energy for liquid-mass energy.Instead, there is an exchange of unlike energy; i.e., heat-diffused energy is exchanged for a net out-transfer of juice-mass and gaseous phase energy.

This prior-art use of conduction heating, therefore, results in a transfer of mass-energy out of the hamburger rather than a like-phase for like-phase exchange of mass-energy between the hamburger and its cooling atmosphere. Conduction, therefore, with prior-art heats actually helps to conduct (transfer) at least 25% of mass-energy weight out of prior-art hamburgers and conduct nothing back into the hamburger to replace this lost weight.

It is another object of this invention, therefore, to provide a system that will allow and/or assist heat conduction to function to whatever extent it is able, without obstructing the mechanics of heat-exchange and/or the laws of conservation from operating within the cooking hamburger proper.

b. Radiation requires that the substances to be heated be of a fluid, ambient, or permeable nature so that radiant wave-energy can move into and/or through and/or mix with the substances. The hamburger patty is a substance that is neither freely fluid or ambient, nor very permeable. Thus, it offers considerable resistance to the radiant heat-waves used by prior-art cooking elements and apparatuses. As with conduction, the prior-art resorts to a massive quantity of radiant waves (massive output of high-density heat), to overcome the resistance of the hamburger mass. In the process, the fluid ingredients within the mass are rendered more fluid and ambient, and the solid ingredients rendered more permeable, permitting the radiant waves greater freedom to move into and/or through and/or mix with the hamburger's juices, gases, and tissues.This increase in fluidity ambiency, and permeability is increasingly evident as cooking heats move up the thermal scale. More and more after the cooking heats pass 212", internal meat-water expands into the steam phase which, in turn, breaks open meat cells, releasing its juices, and exposing bare cell tissues to increased-speed heat-forced ambient movements of liquid juice, steam, and to the combustion phase of tissues. In general, the priorart's use of radiation heat produces a broad degeneration and/or deleterious change in the states or phases of a cooking hamburger's several ingredient substances. It is a change that enables the diffusion mechanics of conduction to operate more efficienctly within the hamburger mass; but at the expense of juice weight loss and tissue deterioration. Thus conduction and radiation serve mutually supporting roles in promoting the exit of juices out of prior-art hamburgers.

It is, therefore, another object of this invention to provide a heat-exchange system that will present both conduction and radiation from promoting the exit of juice out of cooking hamburgers.

c. Convection involves an actual physical mass (weight) energy movement; a physical exchange of locations between two like masses. Thus, it, and it only, can provide a true exchange of like-phase for like-phase mass (weight) energy, provided the two masses are in direct physical (no barrier in between) contact with each other.

Since the loss of hamburger-cooking juice (a fluid-liquid substance) is the problem of this invention, the problem is essentially one of fluid-liquid dynamics where convection means the transfer of a property of the fluid from one position to another by movement of the fluid. If, as is the case here, the property is heat, convection is distinct from radiative and conductive transfers which do not require movement of the substance. In the natural (non-propeller forced) convection in hamburger cookery, the fluid movement of cooking juices derives its energy from the kinetic and potential energy supplied to it in the form of density changes (expansions) induced by heating. The higher the heats, the more expanded and lowered will be the densities of the fluid-liquid, and, therefore, the faster will be the fluid movement of cooking hamburger juices.

The prior-art heats are so high that the relative impermeability and resistance of the immobile hamburger tissues to heat-pressure rapid juice movement also builds up back-pressures that assist in a net out-movement of both gasified juice and dehydrated juice solids from the hamburger body into the atmosphere. In such net exit movements the very nature of convection precludes its ability to play a substantial weight-loss-prevention role in the conservation of the prior-art's hamburger mass-energy. Convection can only work when there is a like-phase for likephase exchange of mass-energy. Practically none of this kind of exchange takes place in prior-art hamburger cookery; only small amounts within the hamburger body itself. There is no entry or re-entry from outside the hamburger of any fluid-liquid mass.

Evidence of this is: (1) The existence of juice remaining in the prior-art's cooked hamburger.

Empirical observation indicates it is largely the cell-encapsuled (intracellular "bound") juice and/or connective tissue that remains entrapped in the prior-art hamburger after cooking. This juice, because the relatively impermeable nature of the cell wall and webbed connective tissues are barriers to fast exchange movement, will remain relatively untouched by convection. (2) The existence of juice-weight losses between 25% and 33% levels. Since cellular juice is normally 25% intrcellular ("free," outside the cell proper) and 75% intracellular ("bound," encapsulated within unbroken cells) a fast mass-energy exchange would first affect the "free" juices and the liquid fats. These two hamburger ingredients (free juice and fats) alone could produce the 25% to 33% juice loss.And finally (3) the existence of a large net out-movement and no inmovement of juice weight; and therefore to that extent, no mass-energy exchange that can be classified as convection.

In the prior art systems it is next to impossible to measure precisely the extent of the cooking roles played respectively by conduction and radiation. They enact mixed but supporting rolls.

With pan or griddle frying, with its direct meat to hot-metal contact, the major role is played by conduction. With broiling, where all or most of the heat source uses heat-wave transfer through an ambient atmosphere to contact the meat, the major role is played by radiation. Convection plays little or no role in prior-art cookery because there is no physical exchange of fluid juices between the inside and the outside of the hamburger. Any convection in the prior-art functions largely as a transfer mechanism and not as an exchange mechanism. It functions as a one-way pipeline carrying juice out and conveying no juice back into the hamburger. It cannot, therefore, even be classified as convection in the exchange of phase-for-phase, visible, physical, massweight, sense of the word.

It is, therefore, another object of this invention to provide a heat-exchange system that will allow and assist convection to exercise a major and measurable role in the conservation of massenergy in hamburger cookery so that all of the "free" cellular protein juices within the hamburger can be exchanged, without any barrier preventing such an exchange, on a phase-forphase basis with similar juices from both within and without the hamburger mass.

Each of the exchange and transmission systems used by the prior-art could have involved a partial-like-for-like (the same kind of mass for the same kind of mass; the same kind of energy for the same kind of energy) exchange of mass-energy in hamburger cookery if the prior-art had been willing to radically extend the time and reduce the temperatures necessary to accomplish this. But the fast-food prior-art has never been willing to do this. Therefore, they have never had exchanges of like-for-like mass or like-for-like energy between the inside and outside of their cooking hamburgers. Substantial equality in exchange of mass has never been part of their cookery. Instead there has always been a large net loss of hamburger mass-energy in the form of juice-weight loss transferred out of the hamburger.

Without modifying their conventional cooking apparatuses, the prior-art fast-food practitioners could have partially reduced juice losses if they had been willing to reduce their cooking heats to under 212 and about triple their cooking-time periods to conform to the time-heat juiceconservation requirements of hamburger meat's heat tractibilities. But, if they had done this, they would have completely sacrificed their commitment to the concept of "fast food". There is evidence that some of them made attempts in this direction; attempts that failed primarily because they simply refused to sacrifice their commitment to "fast-food" operation.

These attempts and failures, plus a blind inability to recognize and/or honor the requirements of basic physical laws, has resulted in a haphazard use of the mechanics of heat exchange by the prior-art fast-food practitioners. These mechanics of heat exchange became involuntarily involved in various degrees, by commission or omission, and their individual effectiveness sacrificed for the fast-food commitment to speed.

It thus becomes another overall objective of this invention to discover a heat-exchange system that will enable a truer and more equal exchange of like-phase for like-phase mass-energy to take place in hamburger cookery, and do so, if possible, without sacrificing fast-food speed in cooking.

It will be apparent from this brief examination of the cooking temperatures, the heat-exchange systems, and the heat-transmission systems used for exchanging cooking heats that any method and/or means that does not produce a kind-for-kind, same mass for same mass, or a like-for-like (like-phase for like-phase) exchange of mass-energy, that forces transfer of mass-energy out of the hamburger without replacing it with a like mass-energy, is deleterious to the quality of the hamburger. This reduction in quality (expecially juice-level quality) is the present and accepted state of the prior-art. In the prior-art there is no balancing or offsetting exchange equivalent in mass-energy of like-for-like matter. Prior-art cookery loses at least 25% of the total hamburger mass via one-way transfers of mass energy out of the hamburger.It cannot provide full and true two-way exchanges of like-for-like mass-energy. Thus it prevents at least the law of conservation of mass for operating within a hamburger patty.

Therefore, another one of the overall objectives of this invention is to provide a system that will enable the law of conservation of mass to operate within a cooking hamburger patty.

Since hamburger meat is the exemplary substance with which this invention is concerned, it is incumbent that an internal examination be made of this particular substance of matter.

It is a common phenomenon, observable by anyone, that hamburgers will visibly move and contract in size when they are cooked. It is also a common phenomenon, observable by anyone, that the skeletal muscles of vertebrates will contract when stimulated. Since the meat used in hamburgers is practically all beef muscle whose cellulose structure is designed specifically to perform a contractile function, it would be well to examine briefly what, if any, relationship exists between the contractility of beef muscle and the contraction in cooked hamburger size.

Skeletal muscles of beef cattle are composed of muscle fibers (cells); they are flexible, elongated, parallel cylinders of a proteinaceious nature. Within the fibers are the fibrils and their enclosed filaments; the fibrils and filaments together making up a chain of shorter striated or banded sections called striations. The fibers are between 0.00039 to 0.0039 of an inch in diameter, and from 0.3937 of an inch to several times longer in length. The striations (bands) within the fibrils range in length from 0.0000624 to O.Q00068 of an inch. These measurements thus indicate there are upwards of some 5800 striations within the length of the shortest fiber (cell), and hundreds of millions within a single muscle.

Since these fibril striations are banded together to make up the longer fiber-cell they may be compared to links that are hooked together to make up a long chain. In a chain each link is a completely formed unit independent of the other links, but each link must be hooked to other links to' make a chain. Thus too, in muscle structures each striation is a completely formed contractile cell structure independent of the others but it must be banded to others to function as a muscle fiber. The micron-size, the huge numbers, and the singular contractile structure of the striations have an important bearing on the contraction of cooking hamburgers.

A singly muscle may be made up of hundreds of thousands of fibers (cells) packed together to form a kind of living cable. A cross section of this "cable" would show some 1000 to 2000 smaller fibrils within each of the fibers; the fibrils again laying parallel to one another. Within the fibrils are filaments which again run parallel to one another. The filaments and their encompassing fibrils working together do the actual contractile work. Each fibril holds hundreds of these unique contractile filaments each with their thousands of striations; together they comprise the smallest known structural-cell component of muscle before one enters the stillmysterious histo-bio-chemical submicron-molecular world underpinning and governing this contactile muscle function.

A 200,000 times magnification by an electron microscope shows the superfine filaments to be arranged in a geometric pattern in which thick and thin sections alternate. As a muscle fibril contracts, its filaments do not seem to become shorter. This explains the theory that thin filaments may be arranged so that they slide between thick filaments. A crude illustration of this theory is to image these filaments as a zipper with opposite-facing studs that can slide into each other in a contracted releasable lock and slide out of each other into an expanded unlocked separation, and then resting in either position without a net increase or decrease in the actual total width of the zipper-band with its studs. These structural and functional details are meaningful here only insofar as they explain the constancy of a contractile cell's internal space.

The significance of this for a hamburger is that such cells can contract without squeezing out their internal juices.

The ability of the cellular striations to contract depends first of all on the residual contractibility remaining in post-mortem beef muscle. This may range from 25% to 40% depending in large measure on the physical posture (stretch) and/or the time-temperature factors to which the beef is subjected while entering rigor mortis, including the pre-rigor and post-rigor periods. After that, the actual contraction that can and does take place within the residual contractile modulus depends on the quality, extent, and duration of the cooking heat exposures delivered by the cooking system.And even though the fibril-filament cellular system is well suited to retain a substantial amount of juice in the face of moderate physical and thermal abuse (because of the singular structural micron-size individuality of the striations), a remarkable capability that persists even after homogenization of the meat, it simply is unable to keep this entire capability intact under the massive onslaught of heat from prior-art hamburger cookery.

The spaces within a muscle's cellular structures (inside and outside of the fibers, fibrils, and filaments ) are filled with a collagenous cytoplasm, or blood fluid. The fluid on the outside of the cell proper is known as intercellular or "free" juice; that on the inside of the cell proper is known as intracellular or "bound" juice. These "juices", along with the highly hydrolyzed collagen and collagenous fibers (in distinction to sheath (endymysial) fibers and undissolved connective tissues) within all the cellular muscle tissues, make up the major composition of what shows up as cooked meat juice. It is the "free" juice that becomes the first and major loss casualty of the prior-art's cooking heats; and then to a lesser degree the "bound" juice.

More specifically, the significance of all this highly simplified but basic histo-biological description of muscle compositions, structures, and functions and their incidence in the cooking of hamburgers is that: (1) It is the intercellular structures (holding the non-encapsulated "free juice") that first rupture and collapse, thereby releasing their "free juice" and creating sluice-ways or passageways through and along which such juice will flow out of the cellular system. These same opened passageways could the provide the means for a return flow of juice from outside the cellular structures if the passageways could be kept open and if suitable cooking-environment conditions could be discovered to permit and promote a return flow of juice.

(2) The cellular structure within raw hamburger patties will retain an extensive post-rigor modulus of contractibility even though they have been ground into relatively small particles. For example, even though a single orifice in the extruding plate of a meat grinder may be only 1/16 (.0625) of an inch in both diameter and thickness, the meat within the cubic area of these dimensions could contain over one-million individual unbroken fibril striations, each one being a complete cellular system of contractile fibrils and filaments. Thus a pound hamburger could contain tens of millions of inidividual contractile striations, many of them still capable of extensive contractions from the hyperexcitement created by the massive thermal stimuli produced by the prior-art's cooking systems.

(3) The stimulation from prior-art cooking heat is sufficiently constant, violent, and/or extreme so that the cellular structures enter a hyperexciteable state and in a few minutes becomes locked in an extreme, practically unreleasable, irreversible cramp, closing down the whole muscle to further movements of either relaxation or contraction. The further up the thermal scale the cooking heats move, the tighter becomes this cellular cramp, eventually causing an extreme irreversible contraction of muscle-meat structures.

(4) The irreversible contraction (cramp) and the fast cellular-structure movements that take place during its formation temporarily opens and then permanently closes the hamburger mass.

This mass is opened as the high heats purge the inter-cellular and cell-broken intracellular juices out of the mass, and then the whole mass shrinks as the remaining whole cells close a cramping lock on the residual intracellular juices. A convulsive cellular contraction takes place that literally squeezes the free and/or tenuously-held juice out of the cellular mass.

In 4 minutes most prior-art hamburger operators bring temperatures from 0" to 400 or more.

Even the operators who start with hamburger at 40 refrigerated temperatures and cook at 250' bring their temperatures up 210 . Thus most of the prior-art produces 200 to 400 temperature increases inside their hamburgers within a 4-minute time span, or 50 to 100" per minute. These are violent and massive thermal shocks that can quickly produce the convulsive juice-expelling squeezings, extreme contractions, and permanent contractile locks within the contractile cells of hamburgers that show themselves at the end of the prior-art's cooking time as relatively hard, dry, shrunken pieces of meat.

It is an objective, therefore, to provide cooking heats that reduce and/or eliminate the cellular juice-expelling squeezings and contractile activity, and extreme muscle cramp in beef hamburger muscle cells, keep juice-purged intercellular passageways open and provide conditions that permit and promote a return flow of juice.

These shrunken pieces of meat are a common phenomenon, observable by anyone who cooks hamburgers. Any observer can see them visibly shrink as they.are being cooked by the systems of the prior-art. It is well known in all fast-food hamburger restaurants that a 20% fat, quarter pound, circular hamburger patty having a precooked diameter of 5-inches and a weight of 4-oz.

will shrink to about 4 inches in diameter and to a weight of about 3-oz. or less after cooking.

This is a 20% reduction in diameter size and 25% or more reduction in weight.

The reduction in diameter size is not per se a deleterious reduction because this could simply mean a linear contraction of the beef contractile muscle cells, a phenomenon that normally occurs in various degrees under the influence of temperatures outside of the normal temperature climate of such contractile cellular structures. However, if in the process of this cellular contraction beef juice is permanently and irreplaceably expelled from confinement within the ground beef mass, then the reduction in diameter size is optical evidence of a very serious loss in juice weight, nutrition, flavor, and economic value.

Thus, when the 20% reduction in diameter is accompanied by a 25% reduction in weight the occurrence is one of great and serious concern to everyone involved in the sale and purchase of hamburgers. Restaurant owners and consumers everywhere view this reduction in weight as a reduction in the entire value of the food; a value not measured simply in terms of economic value. Joining the consumers are nutritionists, health authorities, and government conservationists who view this reduction more importantly in terms of a loss to our Nation in valuable human body-building and body sustaining nutrition.

Practically all of the 25% reduction in the total uncooked hamburger weight is due to a loss of juice. It is in the meat juices, in distinction to the meat tissues and fibers, where practically all of the flavor, juiciness, tenderness, and immediately digestable nutrition resides. Remove all of the juice from a cooked hamburger and all that remains is tasteless, dry, tough, substantially nutritionless fiber; a remnant without any significant nutritional value.

When one considers that the weight of the juice alone may represent 75% of the total weight of the hamburger, the loss of juice-weight becomes even more serious. A 25% reduction in total weight thus means a 33% reduction in juice weight; and a 33% reduction in total weight means a 44% reduction in juice weight. Such reductions in juice weight are commonplace facts of life in the cookery of fast-food hamburgers today. As noted above, the annual nutritional and monetary loss from the juice-weight loss is staggering. It is further objective, therefore, to reduce the shrinkage in size and weight now occurring in prior-art hamburger cookery.

It should be noted in passing that very little work has been done by the scientific community of the meat industry on the problem of beef juice loss by comparison with the huge volume of work it has done on the problem of beef tenderness. The prestigious symposium entitled: "The Science of Meat and Meat Products" (compiled by Price/Schweigert-1 978) with its extensive, authoritative, and updated bibliographies is open evidence of this fact. This work is proof that in the past the heaviest pressure from the market has been for answers on the problems of cooked meat tenderness; and the problem of cooked juice loss has been practically ignored.Now for the first time, to the best of my knowledge, this invention presents an analytical review showing causal relationship between the structural and functional characteristics of beef muscle and the juice loss activated and incurred by the practices of prior-art hamburger cookery, and then making it a specific objective of this invention to substantially reduce this juice loss based on a knowledgeable understanding of this causal relationship.

This concludes my brief description of the physical laws and their mechanical applications as they influence the cellular contractions and juice losses of hamburgers cooked under prior-art practices. This brief description of the sciences, and their specific phenomena, influencing the behaviour of a cooking hamburger is given for the sole purpose of providing knowledgeable references for "Understanding the Problem" of this invention. And then, in turn, to give full recognition to the need for obeying the requirements of the specific physical laws, their applications, and the resident biological structures as they bear on hamburger juice losses.I can now reiterate that the sole objective of this invention was to discover, via a knowledgeable approach, a scientifically-acceptable system for cooking hamburgers that would substantially reduce the juice losses experienced in the prior-art.

Because the solution to my one objective on juice loss also automatically cured a large number of other hamburger problems that have been present in the prior-art, I will list them and claim their solutions as a-posteriori objectives; i.e., they became objectives after their solutions had been discovered. I call these problems circumjacent and ancillary because they surround and are subservient to my central problem and objective. Their solutions are 100% bonus benefits of this invention. In a true and literal sense they are pure discoveries of the most surprising nature because they were unsought, enexpected, gratuitously granted beneficiaries of the solution to the juice-loss problem. The problems were long-standing and festering until they were accidentally covered and cured by the blanket that spread over them upon discovery of the answer to the juice-loss problem.

There are twelve of these ancillary problems; all of them with their accompanying a-posteriori objectives. They fall into three groups based on the nature of the problems, as follows: 1.

Quality and Health Problems. 2. Operational Problems of Fast Food. 3. Heat-Use Problems from the Cooking System.

1. Quality and Health Problems with Prior-Art Hamburgers a. The problem of flavor-loss through evaporation There is no argument that when juice-weight is lost, flavor and health-giving nutrition is lost with it. But it may be argued that the 50% by volume water content of beef juice that may be lost through evaporation by steam does not carry with it the flavor-and-nutrition-producing solids-content of the juice; that this solids content remains in the meat. It is true that evidences of, and tests for, flavor loss via steam are not as objective and as measurable as the evidence and tests for size and weight loss. However, the presence and amount of flavor lost by evaporation can be partially seen and measured, and additionally detected by the subjective human senses of taste and smell.These methods produce the following evidence, some of which admittedly defies accurate measurement; (1) The presence of dehydrated and/or carmelized protein, salt, and other juice solids that adhere to the searingly hot metal surfaces of frying and broiling equipment that are in contact with the cooking hamburger. These solids are the basic flavor-supply and nutrition-giving ingredients of beef juices, most of which have been forced and carried out of the meat by steam pressures.

(2) The aroma of juice flavors in the atmosphere in which the hamburgers are cooked. This aroma is part of the vaporized (steam-gas) phase of the juices that are excreted from the meat by steam-producing heats. It is well recognized in the cooking and aromatic arts that the aromas in the atmosphere in which cooking is done can identify the flavor of the cooking products; and thus too the flavor of cooked beef juice for cooking hamburgers is identified.

(3) Actual taste comprisons between juice, condensed from vapor and reconstituted from solids, captured outside the cooking hamburgers with that taken from the inside of the cooking hamburgers. The flavors of the two are quite comparable, indicating again that when the juice exits from the cooking meat via steam-produced evaporation it does so with a substantial percentage of its ingredient-flavor composition intact.

This problem of flavor and nutrition loss via evaporation has been ever-present in prior-art hamburger cookery, the solution of which now became an a-posteriori objective of this invention.

b. The problem of flavor per se Regardless of how much juice-flavor is lost or retained in a hamburger, there is a continuing problem of the flavor of the meat per se. It is customary for consumers to add flavor to their meat with various spices and condiments, such as salt, pepper, mustard, catsup, etc. Such flavorings are normally added to the outside of the meat after it has been cooked. Some restaurants do this for their customers before the hamburger patty is cooked by rubbing or sprinkling the flavorings on the surfaces of the hamburgers. At best this is an unsatisfactory procedure. The amounts so applied are not uniform, and some is lost during the frying or broiling.

A more uniform distribution of flavorings could be performed if there was a practical way to accomplish this on the inside of the meat before it has been cooked. But in the prior-art this is a difficult and uncertain venture; one which, for practical purposes, the prior-art has not been able to accomplish.

It is therefore a further ancillary objective of this invention to provide a simple, easy, and effective method for uniformly distributing added flavorings to the meat during the cooking process.

c. The problem of collagen losses Collagen is a protein of unusual complexity in both chemistry and structure; that for the purposes of this invention does not require analysis. For this invention it need only be noted that: (1) collagen in all stages of hydrolysis is a major proteinaceous component of all cellular and intercellular beef tissues and (2) thus a major nutritional compoment of ground beef in which (3) it also functions as a soft, semi-fluid, frangible, adhesive binder of the hamburger patties (4) that undergoes quite rapid shrinkage under rising cooking temperatures; (5) that it is converted in large part to soluble gelatin under the high and/or prolonged temperatures above its thermal shrinkage level; and (6) in that state it becomes in indeterminate percentages a delicate flavored, slightly coagulating, yet highly fluid, component of hamburger juice.

Under the prior-art hamburger cooking temperatures high above 212" with their hydrolysisdegenerating juice-dissipating heats, much of the collagen flavor, weight, nutritional, and soft (frangible and loose) tissue-binding values are lost.

The problem of collagen losses has also been everpresent in prior-art hamburger cookery, the cure of which is now an objective of this invention.

d. The problem of tenderness It is well known in the meat-cookery art that the amount of juice in cooked meat has a direct influence on the meat's tenderness. The greater the quantity of juice, the greater the tenderness and, vice versa, the lower the quantity of juice the tougher the meat.

It is therefore, another ancillary objective of this invention to increase via increased juice retention the tenderness of cooked hamburgers, steaks, and other items covered by this invention.

e. The problem of carcinogens whan hamburger cookery produces heats over 212" Carcinogens are chemical compounds of known or unknown structures that produce tumors which can be malignant (cancer-causing) in multicellualar organisms. Such compounds could cause mutagens (genetic changes) in bacteria that disrupt normal cellular functions and create cellular mutations that function and grow without regard for the needs of the host organism.

Widespread and unchecked growth (metastasis) of such carcinomata eventually will kill the host organism.

In 1 933 a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon known as 3,4-benzopyrene was identified as a carcinogen that will cause skin cancer in many species when applied in low dosages. Since then, continuing evidence had indicated that 3,4-benzopyrene is formed during pyrogenation or incomplete burning of almost any kind of organic material. For example, this carcinogenic hydrocarbon has been found in overheated (over the burning point) fats, oils, broiled or fried (hamburgers) and smoked meats, and other foods so cooked. The rate and quantity of the formation rapidly increases as thermal levels escalate, especially in the absence of a solvent to dilute it and/or carry it away. For this reason, biochemists have become increasingly concerned over human safety from the benzopyrene carcinogenic mutagens produced by the heats of priorart hamburger cookery.

The problem of carcinogens in burnt, cauterized, and carmelized hamburger meat has been every present in prior-art cookery. It is therefore another objective of this invention to prevent the formation of carcinogens during hamburger cooking.

2. Operational Problems of the Fast-Food Hamburger Chains There are four such problems. They are: speed, simplicity, uniformity, and doneness determination. These four constitute the very heat of a successfull fast-food system. Unless they are fulfilled, a fast-food chain system has no reason to exist.

a. The problem of speed One of the basic advantages and sources of success of a fast-food chain system is, as the term implies, speed in serving a customer; thus, speed in production of a hamburger. The customer patronizing a fast-food restaurant wants fast service to reduce the time it takes to satisfy hunger and the overall time required for a meal. Such customers, especially children, simply wish to eat and be on their way. Restaurant management is also interested in the same objectives, but also an additional one. It also wants a fast "turnover" of seat occupancy in order to maximize its sales, profits, and utilization of physical facilities; and then hold customers who do not wish to stand in a waiting line.

This problem is ever-present and required constant supervision over cooking times, temperatures, and operational movements if the fast-food chain wishes to retain its position in its highly competitive industry. Any cookery system, therefore that wishes to compete in the fast-food hamburger industry should also ideally fulfill this objective of speed.

b. The problem of simplicity Fast-food hamburger chains operate under a high-volume low-profit margin policy. To do this the entire operation is streamlined for maximum efficiency with the lowest possible labor cost.

To keep labor costs low, these chains hire unskilled, low-educated, low-pay-scale labor, and provide a simple system that such labor can be trained to operate with a minimum of schooling in operational methods, and that enables maximum output with minimum time and physical movement.

Despite the simplicity of their systems, th fast-food chains find it necessary to maintain continuing training and refresher programs. They all have formal training schools with textbooks, model kitchens, exams, and teaching staff in which restaurant personnel are schooled for severa! months before entering active service. The school of the largest fast-food chain has been so formalized that it is called Hamburger University and awards a Degree of Hamburgerology to its graduates.

It is evident, therefore, that maintenance of simplicity in their operational system is another one of the fast-food chain problems. This too, therefore, is another abjective of this invention.

c. The problem of uniformity To maintain a reputation for consistent reliability and good quality food a fast-food chain must maintain consistent uniformity in the food and identical quality in all its stores. A customer in New York expects, and the chain constantly tries to deliver, identical quality when the customer eats in San Francisco. This is an on-going problem that requires constant attention to method of food preparation and training of its employees. It is never fully accomplished, because the human element is never uniformly reliable.

In an effort to attain and control a semblance of product uniformity the prior-art has devised various operational controls and procedures to provide their hamburgers with: equal heat exposures, equal doneness levels; evenness, intensity, and duration of heat; reduced dependency on the human element. They have installed timers, thermostats, thermometers, speedometers, elevational spacers, guards or shields to reduce air ambiency, etc.; and equipped such instrumentation with push buttons, limit switches, lights, bells, buzzers, etc., adapted respectively for whichever heat transmission method, conduction and/or radiant heat, is used. Since all their heats enter their hamburgers via a gaseous-phase and/or radiant-wave carrier exposed wholly or partially to open ambient atmospheres, hamburger uniformity is at best of a lowquality (i.e. low-juice retention) order.

The problem of high-quality uniformity (i.e., high-juice uniformity) is a continuing challenge and is therefore also an objective of this invention.

d. The problem of visible determination of interior doneness levels Accuracy in the desired level of doneness is a constant operational problem. Because of the cooking losses this problem has produced, it is considered by some to be next in importance to th problem of juice loss.

Doneness levels in beef cookery are judged by the color of the cooked meat: red is rare, pink is medium-rare, brown in medium, and gray is well-done. It is a judgment of the eye: yet a judgment the eye cannot make because the interior of a cooking hamburger is not visible.

Some cooks compensate for this lack of visibility by pressing the cooking hamburger with a fork or spatula to note the color of the juice that is thus squeezed out. Others partially split open the center of the cooking hamburger in an effort to see its level of doneness. But, at best, any prior-art method of judging interior doneness levels of the cooking hamburger by the eye is a haphazard and inaccurate process.

It is therefore one of the ancillary objectives of this invention to provide a means for visibly judging the interior doneness of a cooking hamburger from evidence provided by optical observation of an exterior phenomenon.

3. Heat-Use Conservation and Reduction of Energy Problems of the Prior-Art Systems Energy-heat costs are a major expense in any cooking system. Because of the rapid and large increases in the price of petroleum, energy-heat costs have tripled during the past few years.

The fast-food hamburger chains now keep energy-heat costs high on their list of problems looking for solutions. The mechanics of prior-art hamburgers permits separation of these problems in three areas as follows: a. Operational problems In the interest of speed, the fast-food operators use heat levels far in excess of those needed to simply cook a hamburger. A hamburger can be cooked conveniently at home where time is not of the essence, with temperatures considerably under the level used by fast-food people; namely under 250 vs. the 250 to 1200 temperatures used in various fast-food operations.

In addition, prior-art fast-food hamburger cooking is done in an open atmosphere into which large quantities of heat-energy not used for actual cooking are expended. Take for example, the cooking systems used by the two largest practitioners of fast-food hamburgers in the U.S.: (1) One of them uses open, electric or gas-heated griddles or grils (flat metal surfaces) on which hamburgers are cooked. There are at least six areas where energy is lost.

(a) During the pre-heat period when their grills are coming up to required heat.

(b) The lay-down time during which the entire grill is not used until the last hamburger has been laid down on it.

(c) The open spaces between round-shaped hamburgers that account for about 20% of the total grill area. Thus at least 20% of the energy released on the surface of the grill is wasted.

(d) During the flip-over when one hamburger at a time is flipped.

(e) During the removal of one hamburger at a time, leaving large areas of the grill temporarily unused, because they can't be removed simultaneously.

(f) During the period when sales do not require use of the entire surface of a single grill.

It is estimated that upwards of 60% of the total heat energy used by this system of cooking is lost; i.e., is not actually utilized directly and solely for cooking hamburgers.

(2) The other one uses gas heat with rows of gas jets located above and/or below an openmesh moving chain (wire gridiron) belt on which the hamburgers are conveyed through the rows of gas flames. Being in an open atmosphere it is impossible for any more than a small percentage of the total heat energy to enter into the hamburgers themselves. It has been estimated that less than 20% of the actual heat energy used by the system is actually used to cook hamburgers. The rest is lost into the atmosphere. It is estimated that upwards of 80% of the total heat-energy with this system of cooking therefore is wasted.

These samples of heat-energy losses are representative of energy problems in hamburger cookery; problems which require constant operational attention to curtail high-priced energy losses. The reduction and/or elimination of such energy loss problems due to operations mechanics also became a specific objective of this invention.

b. Systems problems Systems for exchanging cooking heat have been described in previous paragraphs in connection with the Mechanics of Heat Exchange. The same method of classification is used here in connection with the efficiency of heat-energy utilization. It is interesting to note that in each of the three systems described below there is no liquid impermeable barrier between the meat and the encompassing or contacting heat source.

Presumably, for the sake of maximum heat-energy utilization meat and heat are in direct contact.

(1) Liquid heat encompassing hamburger By surrounding and encompassing the food from all sides in direct contact with a hot liquid as, for example, by deep-fat frying in liquid oil. This would be the most efficient of the three prior-art systems for heat utilization because practically all the heat would be used for cooking; it is actually pressed in, on, and against, the hamburger from all sides, and not dissipated and/or lost in the atmosphere. Therefore, practically all the heat-energy input would be used for actual cooking of the meat. This method has been rejected by the prior-art because under prior-art methods is produced unpalatable flavors.

(2) Gas (hot air) heat encompassing hamburger By syrrounding and encompassing the food from all sides and all angles with hot gas (air) in direct physical contact with the cooking hamburger as, for example, by baking in a radiant-heat oven. This would be the second most efficient user of heat output into the hamburger. It's heat is confined within an oven but much of it still is lost in the oven's atmosphere. This method is not used for cooking hamburger because is it too slow, dries the meat, and is operationally cumbersome.

(3) Gas (hot air) heat encompassing hamburger This is a non-encompassing, open atmosphere, direct physical heat-source contact with the hamburger at a high-heat; the heat coming from only one or two sides at a time; as for example, with flame broiling or hot metal grilling or frying. This classification embraces the cookery systems used by all present-day practitioners of fast-food hamburger cookery. These systems are the most wasteful of heat-energy because the total heat output cannot be completely confined around the cooking hamburger. Most of it is lost in the surrounding atmosphere.

In addition, it is also acknowledged within the prior-art that this third classification creates numerous problems arising from the uncertainties of heat penetration into the hamburger; problems for which the prior-art has not found satisfactory solutions. These problems include most of those outlines above under "Ancillary Problems." It is evident that the fast-food systems use the third classification almost solely in the interest of speed, and for this interest they have been willing to live with the low heat-use efficiency and the quality and operational problems created by this classification.

Thus the elimination of the problems created by a system per se also became a specific objective of this invention.

c. Holding problems Regardless of the system used for cooking hamburgers, all fast-food restaurants are confronted with problems in connection with holding the cooked product until it is sold. When sales are fast and continuing there is no holding problem. But when sales are slow and/or intermittent, a fast-food operation has a problem in maintaining heat and juice in the hamburger, and speed in its service. To maintain its reputation for speed, a fast-food operation normally holds a small inventory of cooked hamburgers so that if there is a sudden influx of customers the product is immediately available. But it must maintain its normal level of heat and juice if it wishes to maintain its quality. If the sudden influx of customers fails to materialize, the product gradually cools and dries to the point of being unsaleable.

For most of the fast-food operators, this holding period is the source of constant heat loss and drying within the cooked hamburger. It therefore requires constant vigilance and judgment on the cook's part to judge how much cooked inventory to keep in readiness. Even the best cook, with the best of judgment, is not infallible. Therefore, these fast-food operators have a constant problem of their product cooling and drying during their hamburger holding periods to the point of being unsaleable.

One of the leading fast-food operators holds his hamburgers in a hot (close to the boiling point) liquid after they have been cooked. This prevents cooling but the high heat can continue to leach and purge juice out of the hamburgers so that this operator's hamburgers consistently show the highest juice loss (33%) in the fast-food industry.

Threfore, the after-cooking holding period is an unabated problem, ever present in the hamburger industry and as such its' solution is another ancillary objective of this invention.

None of these problems were initially objectives of this invention. It was aware of their presence but none of them, individually and/or collectively, were of a monetary, nutritional, and/or social-loss magnitude comparable to the juice-loss problem. So my research was directed solely to the objective of solving the juice-loss problem.

But then, as will be noted later under "Description of the Discoveries," all of these problem became legitimate hindsight, and therefore pure surprise objectives and discoveries of this invention.

A description of the discoveries of this invention would not be complete without (A) a preface describing the historical stubbornness of the juice-loss problems, and then (B) the three major discoveries that ensued from a solution to the juice-loss problem per se; after which (C) a fourth major, but collective, discovery grouped under the twelve ancillary discoveries resulting from the solution of the juice-loss problem.

A. Preface on the stubbornness of the juice-loss problem.

This stubbornness was characterized by an irritating non-obviousness of the obvious; i.e., the failure to find the simple solution that should have been obvious long ago. To a researcher the final solution then becomes not only a surprising, but also a frustrating, discovery; frustrating because a problem whose solution turned out to be simple and therefore should have been obvious makes the researcher appear incompetent when he doesn't immediately see the obvious. Albeit, what appeared simple and obvious in hindsight certainly appeared neither simple nor obvious during the long gestation period preceding the initial discovery.

During the early research several physical and organic laws bearing on the juice-loss problem began indicating the need for a heat-exchange system that would (1) exchange cooking heats on a like-phase basis (2) at temperatures that would not break and/or shrink muscle-cell structures nor (3) pressure cellular juice out of the meat. But the question remained: Where and how to find such a system? Nothing in the prior-art pointed out a direction. In fact, everything in the accepted conclusions of the art pointed away from my final solution. The empirical evidence of the prior-art practitioners had firmly closed the door to what finally became the answer to the problem.

So my initial experiments began by simply using the griddle and broiling heat exchange systems of the prior-art.

Since it is well-known that low cooling heats are helpful in juice retention I started with radical reductions in cooking heats. I even used heats below the 212 mark; heats which the prior-art had not previously used. I kept lowering the cooking temperatures all the way down to the 150 medium-doneness internal heat-level for cooked beef; the lowest doneness level the fast-food operators have found to be acceptacle by the general public. This was a 40% reduction below the 250 lowest cooking temperature used by the prior-art. But this brought about a 400% increase in cooking time, from about 5 minutes to 20 minutes; obviously no longer a fast-food operation.At this low temperature the juice loss was substantially reduced, about 1 5 percentage points; from the previous 25% to now about 10%. But if the fast-food operators had to choose between the commercial value of reducing juice loss by 1 5 percentage points versus quadrupling their cooking time, there is no question that they would relinquish the 1 5-point juice saving in favor of the shorter cooking time. Operational cooking speed is more vital to a fast-food hamburger system than is a 1 5-point reduction in juice loss.

However, this 1 5-point decrease in juice loss would contribute some positive, and very significant, information for my research. It indicated that lowered temperature alone was not the cure for the fast-food juice-loss problem. Apparently something was inherently obstructive within the prior-art cooking systems; something that was basically prohibited by the laws of both conservation and heat exchange. It was now obvious that a more extensive study was required.

Thereafter, I examined and tested all the basic references and data that impinged on hamburger cookery. These have been briefly summarized in the preceding paragraphs. With such references in hand all the basic causes that theoretically had a bearing on juice-loss finally became visible.

But a cure for the problem still did not come into focus. It was obscured by the fact that some prior-art had tried and discarded, for what appeared sufficient and valid reasons, the deep-fry method that the basic references appeared to recommend. I retraced and retested prior-art procedures, and the apparent vaidity of their conclusions were confirmed. Thus, what appeared good and open in principle and theory was block by what appeared faulty and closed in practice.

Incredible as it appears in hindsight, my final simple dicovery was held in abeyance for several years by my own mental blindness, just as it had been held in abeyance for decades in the history of the prior-art by the same mental blindness. No better illustration of such blindness can be given then the current practice by one of the leaders in fast-food hamburgers of using a hot au jus for holding hamburgers after they have dry-fried. It may appear incredible that such a close working association (i.e., of prior-cooked hamburgers held in a hot au jus) had not prodded someone's mind into the following two associated discoveries: (1) that such a liquid could also be used for both deep (liquid) frying and holding, and then (2) in the particular sequence and combination of first liquid frying and afterwards liquid holding. These are two of the principal discoveries of my invention.

However, out of courtesy to prior-art practitioners, when one considers the prior-art's close-toboiling point heat of its au jus, and the continued shrinkage of its pre-cooked hamburgers in its liquid, it is understandable that everyone would be blind to the possibility of my radically different shrink results, at my radically lowered liquid heats, and my radially new processing sequence and combination of cooking functions.

The key to the cure of the problem made its initial appearance suddenly and unexpectedly. It came while I was sipping hot beef broth during a sick-convalescent period: Suddenly this question surfaced: Why not deep fry in hot beef broth? The answer appeared to be "yes". Here was the possibility for a hamburger cooking system that offered an exchange of heats on a true like-phase for like-phase basis with the liquidity, flavor, and color like that of the original, natural meat juice.

It was a system that could conform to all the laws of conservation and heat exchange. And conform it did. Laboratory testing validated the fact that the key to the problem had been discovered. Thereafter, the cure to the juice-loss problem proceeded expeditiously and in full conformity with the true, and now-known, scientific causes.

It is reasonable to assume, however, that this sudden discovery would not have occurred if I hadn't previously studied and tested the basic references (the laws of conservation, heat exchanges, and muscle function), against the prior-art practices. It would be psychologically appropriate to assume that the discovery was the result of this previously deposited knowledge and suddenly fertilized by a germ of new information. Only after this fertilization did it become possible to piece together practical operating embodiments around my theoretically-acceptable embryo of a viable like-phase heat-exchange system for retention of juice in cooked meat.

B. The three major discoveries of the invention ensuing from the solution of the juice-loss problems per se.

In piecing together embodiments of the like-phase heat exchange system two new and significant discoveries in addition to the like-phase heat exchange itself were made in areas within the juice-loss problem per se. These two are to be considered major discoveries along with the deep-fry like-phase heat exchange discovery. Thus, this invention produced three major juice-retention discoveries.

They are described as follows: 1. Deep-frying hamburgers, in a liquid of like-phase and approximate flavor and color equivalents as their own cooked juices, with the cooking heat exchange taking place via convection.

This discovery is the key that solved all problems, accomplished all the objectives, and led to all the other discoveries of this invention. It made possible the use of full and true convection in the primary mass-energy heat exchange in hamburger cookery. It provided a direct physical contact (no barrier) between the hamburger and the cooking liquid.

For the first time in hamburger cookery an exchange of heat between the cooking meat and the heating medium is now primarily accomplished on a true like-phase for like-phase basis; and actual physical original meat-juice exchanged with a like-phase meat-like liquid. This is accomplishable with said meat-juice that is relatively free (not cellular-bound) within the hamburger mass. To the extent that said meat-juice is still cellular-bound the remaining heatexchange takes place via conduction and/or radiation.

In this description it is germane that "like-phase" cookery be clearly defined. The like-phase in this invention is not defined simply as a liquid in exchange for a liquid. Rather it is a specific kind of liquid: (a) One that defines the liquidity, flavor, and color desired in the cooked product. Preferably this is the liquidity, flavor, and color equivalent of the cooking-meat's own juices. Thus the precise quality of the generic liquid phase will vary particularly in flavor and color from meat to meat and from one level of doneness to another level of doneness. But it will always be fixed in its generic liquid phase, and specific principally in the flavor and color preferred for the specific meat that is being cooked. Thus the specificity of the flavor and color of the liquid cooking medium may differ from that of the liquid in the cooking meat.It may be a flavor and color designed to enhance and/or control the natural cooked flavor and color of a specific meat. The definition of like-phase hamburger cooking in this invention therefore includes specificity on the flavor and color of the cooking liquid; flavored and/or colored by either natural and/or artificial flavors and colors. The definition specifically excludes cooking in water, vegetable oils, and/or liquid fats.

(b) One that defines specific heat parameters, never before used by the prior-art in deep frying, within which my hamburger must be cooked. In the prior-art the term "deep frying" historically has three legs in its definition: (1) Immersion of foods in (2) liquid fats or oils at (3) boiling heats (over 212"). In this invention "deep frying" also has three legs in its definition: (1) Immersion of meat in (2) meat-like juices (3) at temperatures under 212". The definition of "deep frying" using by the prior-art and the definition used in this invention are similar in only one of their three legs; i.e., immersion of the cooking food in a liquid; in the other two legs: (1) the cooking liquids and (2) the cooking heats, they are radically different and mutually exclusive.

Thus specifications for the cooking liquids and heats draw clear lines of demarcation with the prior-art. The importance of, and the radically different results achieved by, these lines of demarcation may be seen in these comparisons: The prior-art's liquids (liquid fats and oils) produce fatty flavors and oily appearances in hamburgers. My liquids (meat like juices) produce meat-juice flavors and appearances that are natural and normal to consumers' customary sensory preception of the cooked meat. It should be noted in passing that cooking in water produces a bland, flat, water flavor; basically flavorless.

As noted previously, the prior-art's hamburger cooking temperatures above 212 produce juice-weight losses that are normally in the 25% to 33% range. In may invention juice-weight losses are normally from 0% (or less) to 10%. The following table compes juice-weight losses produced by the prior-art with those of this invention. The comparison is made by using standard fast-food 4-lb. raw weight hamburgers of 20% fat content and -41-inch thicknesses.

They start frying from the standard frozen state.

JUICE LOSSES Results with Prior-Art Griddled or Broiled Frying time depends on doneness level desired Cooking Heats Above 212* Aprox. Aprox. % Doneness (Usually Fry Time Juice Levels about 400 ) (minutes) Losses Well-done " 6 30% Mediun-well " 5 25 Medium " 4 20 Medium-rare " 3 1 5 Rare " 2 10 Results with this Invention Deep-fry Time: less than 5-minutes Aprox. % Aprox. % Doneness Cooking Heats Juice Less than Levels Under 212 Losses Prior-Art Well-done 170 10% 66% Medium-well 160 7 70 Medium 150 5 75 Medium-rare 140t 1 95 Rare 130 0 100% to (+1 to 9%) 190% It will be noted from the preceding table at the 170 (42 under 212 ) heat level (my welldone level) my juice weight loss is aproximately 66% less than that of the prior-art's well-done level, namely a 10% loss versus a 30% loss with the prior-art.Then after that there is a steadily greater reduction compared with the prior-art, so that around the 130 rare-heat level I discovered: (1) that juice loss was reduced to zero, and then (2) that there was an actual juiceweight increase.

These were reductions that represented 100% to 190% improvements over the prior-art. This dual phenomenon produced the second and third major discoveries of this invention, namely: 2. Reduction of juice weight loss in hamburgers to zero. Just below the 135 temperature a whole new cooking world appeared. In the 7" heat zone between 138 and 135 I discovered that juice loss can be reduced to zero. And then, even more surprising that: 3. Increases in hamburger juice-weight over pre-cooked weight are achieved.

The most surprising phenomenon of my like-phase cookery in the 128 to 135 heat zone is that juice-weight of hamburgers actually can be increased. This was "most surprising" because I considered it unreasonable and illogical to think that cellular structures of cooking meat even could and/or would accept additional juice under any kind of cooking system.

The (2) and (3) discoveries demonstrate that a mass-energy exchange is actually in progress with like-phasejuice cookery. But more importantly that hamburger beef muscle structures in the 128 and 135 heat zone are sufficiently relaxed, and/or hydrolyzed below capacity, that they will, temporarily at least, actually accept additional juice while immersed in like-phase cooking juice. Below-capacity hydrolysis of cellular tissues may account for this phenomenon because the percentage of juice-absorption varies with different batches of hamburger, the normal extremes ranging from plus 1% to 9%.

The like-phase cooking phenomena discovered in the 128 to 135 heat zone evidences the importance of this zone not only for this invention, but for the general advancement of the art.

This zone defines the temperature parameters within which beef muscle cells will change from a state of relaxation and intactness to a beginning state of contraction and break-up. I say "beginning" because under prolonged holding temperatures within this zone the process of contraction and break-up will gradually start taking place. I say "contraction" and "break-up" because in this zone the strong, low-hydrolyzed, connective-type muscle tissues will contract and remain intact, and the weaker intercellular, highly hydrolyzed, collagen-type tissues will gradually expand, dissolve, and/or disintegrate.

The importance of this 128 to 135 heat zone therefore lies in recognizing it as the last opportunity, within the heat-time parameters for fast-food cookery under my deep-frying system for hamburgers to engage in an equal mass-energy exchange with the cooking media, before juice-weight losses again start increasing.

C. A fourth discovery of a major nature, in a collective sense, because a collection of ancillary discoveries ensued from the solution of the juice loss problem.

All the circumjacent and ancillary problems listed and described above had common causes in the high-heat plus non-convection heat transmissions of the prior-art. My deep-frying discoveries also cured these problems by elimianting their common cause. To wit: 1. Five Quality and Health Problems with Prior-Art Hamburgers (a) The problem of flavor loss through evaporation of juice by steam was cured because my hamburgers are deep-fried in a liquid at temperatures below the 212 level at which water turns to steam.

(b) The problem of flavor per se was cured because my hamburgers are cooked immersed, and heats are exchanged via liquid-phase convection, in a flavorful liquid, the equivalent of cooked hamburger juice flavor. Thus liquid flavor both inside and outside the hamburger is practically identical, remains approximately unchanged, and thus the hamburgers' flavor remains relatively constant. Also, if desired, the flavor of this liquid could be enhanced with various added flavorings, and have them carried into the inside of the hamburger during cooking via the convection heat-exchange of this invention.

(c) The problem of valuable protein collagen losses was substantially cured because all the cooking heats of this invention are below the 212 hydrolysis break-up point of collagen. This losses are increasingly reduced as cooking temperature are lowered, and then virtually eliminated as hamburgers are cooked at or near the lowest 128 to 135 level used in one of my exemplary embodiments. This lowest temperature level is still within the highest heattolerable relatively non-destructive levels of beef cellular structures and also within the lowest temperatures allowed for toxic safety.

(d) The problem of tenderness was cured because the principal discovery of this invention produces a hamburger in which most, or all, of the original juice-content has been retained. And thus most, or all, of the original tenderness has been retained.

(e) the problem of carcinogens when hamburger cookery produces the prior-art heats over 212", with resultant burnt organic matter, was completely cured because under my particular liquid immersion cookery, plus heats under 212", it is impossible to burn the tissues of hamburger meat.

2. Four Operational Problems of the Fast-Food Hamburger Chains (a) The problem of speed was also solved because the liquid-immersion true-convection cookery of my system, with heat bearing in on the hamburger from all sides, and under the slight displacement pressures from the encompassing liquid heat, produces the speeds required by fast-food operators at their present time range of four to six minutes.

(b) The problem of simplicity was also solved because my liquid-immersion system requires no manual manipulation by the hamburger cook such as pressing against and turning over on a grill or monitoring the heats and time over a griddle. This kind of manual manipulation is reduced to zero, and simplicity is at the ultimate. Furthermore, my-liquid-cooking system completely encompasses the hamburger with heat; this, and the 212 heat level at which my liquid changes to a gaseous phase, provides built-in natural controls over the heat and time parameters. Thus dependency on the human factor for operational quality is minimized, and simplicity is maximized.

(c) The problem of uniformity, particularly high-juice-retention uniformity, in the cooked hamburgers, was also solved because of the positive juice-retention method of deep-fry cooking discovered by this invention, the details of which have been described heretofore.

(d) The problem of visible determination of interior doneness levels.

A phenomenon of hamburger cookery is the appearance of unique visible excretions that will exude in considerable numbers, if not obstructed, from the interior to the exterior surfaces of cooking hamburgers. They have the appearance of small puffy ployps or warts. They are actually inflamed membranes (soft spongy tissues) that have exuded to the surface under pressure from heat-produced expansions (inflammations) of interior cellular tissues. They pop up quite rapidly once the interior cellular complex has reached a point of heat-induced expansion at which it can no longer contain itself within its original cellular walls.

This expansion is temporary and transitory; it occurs during the brief time-temperature period that begins when the raw meat has reached the 130 rare-doneness level and ends around the 150 medium-doneness level. The evidence of this level of doneness shows itself in the brownto-gray color of these polyps. Thereafter the polyps usually will break loose from the meat under their own gross expansion and/or weight.

Because of their delicate frangible nature these polyps can show themselves only on cooking hamburger surfaces that are free from exposure to dehydrating levels of heat, pressures from gril contacts and/or spatula manipulations, and/or obstructions by crusty or cauterized surfaces.

Being very delicate and frangible, they will rapidly shrivel, collapse, and/or be crushed under very light mechanical pressures (less than 1 /32-oz. psi) and/or dehydrate from heats in excess of 212". Thus in griddle and broiler cookery they are never really visible and therefore not available to the prior-art as an operational tool to determine internal doneness levels.

However, with the liquid-immersion deep-frying of this invention, with its low temperatures and liquid pressures surrounding the cooking meat, the polyps will emerge and grow erect and undisturbed on all of the surfaces of the cooking hamburgers. When the polyps have reached a size of approximately 1 /1 6" height and 1 /8" diameter in a -" thick hamburger, and are a brown-gray color, then the interior of the hamburger is at the medium-to-well level of doneness.

Such polyps are clearly visible on the surfaces of hamburgers cooked in the liquid juices of the invention. If desired, the hamburgers can be lifted by the wire platforms on which they were immersed to the surface of the cooking liquid for closer visibility of the undisturbed top-surfacepolyps.

Thus this invention has provided a practical operational tool whereby the internal, invisible, doneness level of a cooking hamburger may be determined by observing an outward visible phenomenon; a phenomenon that is a natural function of a cooking hamburger. But a function that in the prior-art does not have the freedom to exercise itself as a visible exhibition of a hamburger's inner doneness level. By contrast, under the functional features of my invention (i.e., like-phase convection exchange of mass-energy coupled with low heats and pressures) I provide a functional climate in which the natural functioning of polyp formations takes place without physical obstructions, pressure, or disturbance.

By virtue of this I have discovered a solution to the problem of determining the internal doneness levels from the externally visible polyp-formation phenomenon of cooking hamburgers.

From an operational standpoint this is a unique and important discovery.

3. Three Heat-Use (Conservation and Reduction of Energy) Problems of the Prior-Art Systems (a) Operational problems causing energy losses, such as the estimated 60% to 80% losses with the prior-art systems, have been considerably reduced by my liquid immersion system because my low cooking heats keep the cooking liquid at such a low heat level that heat via gaseous evaporation is of an extremely low order. This, plus the confinement of the cooking liquid in an insulated-walled vessel that is open at only one of its six sides, brings the energy losses down to about 10% compared with the estimated 60% to 80% of the prior-art systems.

This, in turn, means that energy used for cooking hamburgers under my system is about 90% efficient compared with only 40%--or less efficiency under the prior-art systems. Or, another way of stating this advantage is to say that my system could cut energy costs by at least 50%.

(b) System problems of the prior-art causing heat losses have been listed and described in the comparable preceding paragraph under objectives. Of the three systems available to prior-art practitioners they rejected the one that is the most efficient in conserving energy, namely deepfat frying. It was rejected because deep-frying in liquid fat produces objectionable flavors. By eliminating the fat and substituting a liquid comparable to the juice of the meat being cooked, I eliminate the flavor objection and thereby make possible the use of the most efficient energyconservation system presently known for hamburger cookery.

(c) Holding problems of the prior-art systems causing losses of both energy and product due to cooling, drying, and consequent disposal of cold, dry, unsaleable hamburgers, are eliminated by my liquid-immersion cookery system. Hamburgers can be held, at their cooking temperatures (130 or more, but substantially under 212') after being fully cooked, for 15-minutes) and longer if necessary) with no cooling, or drying, and only few percentage points more juice loss than the juice level at the time of finished cook. Thus losses due to holding are simply and easily reduced to a practical zero.

In summarizing these circumjacent and ancillary solutions, it should be noted again that when I arrived at a solution to the juice-loss problem, I suddenly discovered to my surprise that all these other problems had one important thing in common: In varying degrees all of them had a common causal origin in the third classification of heat exchange systems; i.e., the "nonencompassing heat" exchanges, with their conduction-radiation transmission systems, used by the prior-art fast-food practitioners.

The discovery actually produced this double surprise: (1) that so many different problems could have roots in the same common cause; and (2) that a single new system, invented to cure an entirely different problem, could become the common cure for such a large number and diversity of problems. The solutions for all these circumjacent and ancillary problems are therefore claimed as hindsight (unpremeditated, unsought, a-posteriori, and therefore of a suprise-nature of the highest order) objectives of this invention.

The description of this invention has been oriented toward the fast-food segment of the hamburger industry. The specific embodiments detailed below will follow the same orientation.

These embodiments described the preparation of hamburgers from the frozen raw meat to the hot (under 212 ) cooked state within the 5-minute time limitation dsired by fast-food operators.

It will be understood that other embodiments than those described below may use other specifications within the basic parameters of this invention without departing from its spirit and substance. These basic parameters are contained in the abstract of this application as follows: (1) meat patties and steaks cooked by (2) deep-frying the uncooked meat in (3) liquid stocks of the same phase and selected flavor and color equivalents as its own cooked juice (4) at temperatures under 212".

The specific embodiments which follow are identical in the first three of the four exemplary specifications used to describe the basic parameters named above. Then with the fourth specification; i.e., cooking at temperatures under 212", the practitioner has numerous options depending mainly on the level of doneness desired and the percent of juice loss he is willing to accept. Five of these options are listed under the fourth specification. The four basic specifications (parameters) are exemplified as follows: 1. An exemplary meat patty The "quarter pounder" hamburger, of 4-oz. raw weight and 20%c fat content, is a popular size and quality sold by fast-food operators.I chose it for my exemplary embodiments with the understanding that any other weight, size, and/or fat content may be used, with whatever modifications in heats and/or cooking times are necessary to produce better juice-retention results than are obtainable under the prior-art.

2. Deep frying and its apparatus Since the practice of this invention requires deep-frying by immersion in a heated liquid that encompasses the hamburger, a practical operating vessel or apparatus must be provided for properly holding the hamburgers and heating the liquid in which the hamburgers are immersed.

Such apparatuses are already in use in most fast-food restaurants, namely the type used for "deep-fat frying" of such foods as potato segments (french-fies), fish, onion rings, doughnuts, etc. These apparatuses have insulated walls and heat-conducting coils, tubes, or ducts designed for immersion in liquids and for heating and controlling the temperatures of the oils and fats used in deep-frying said foods. These apparatuses are also equipped with open-mesh wire baskets or platforms in, or on, which said foods are held, and which permit the heated liquid to encompass and/or more around the foods being cooked.

These same apparatuses are easily adaptable for my preferred way for deep-frying hamburgers. Only simple modifications are needed, Using a flat wire-mesh platform on which hamburger can rest flat, I then add a second matching-size platform in spaced relationship above the first platform. The space between the two platforms is slightly greater than the thickness of the thickest hamburger that is to be cooked.For example, the "quarter pounder" is normally i-inch thick, and so, in my preferred apparatus embodiment, I use a minimum space elevation of about 3/8-inch between the two platforms in which the resting hamburgers will be (1) held completely submerged and (2) prevented from overlapping each other and/or (3) being physically distorted, twisted, or bent, while the two platforms holding the interlined hamburgers are lowered beneath the surface of the cooking liquid, and while the hamburgers are cooking.

The wire mesh is preferably sized with 2inch square meshes to permit (1) the sightest movement within the liquid, generated by heat inputs, to circulate freely around the cooking hamburgers, and (2) permit a relatively unobstructed growth of polyps of the 1/16-inch diameter size on the hamburgers' surfaces. The interior horizontal dimensions of the apparatus and the wire platforms may be of any size depending on the number of hamburgers it is desired to cook at one time. The interior vertical depth of the apparatus may be of any size depending on how many platforms are used to keep hamburgers immersed when stacked in separated layers by the spaced-apart platforms on, and in, which the hamburgers are held at any one time.

A description of the drawing of an exemplary apparatus follows: The specific embodiment of the invention will be explained in conjunction with the accompanying diagrammatic drawing in which Figure 1 is a perspective view of an apparatus for cooking meat in accordance with the invention Figure 2 illustrates hamburgers being loaded onto an open-mesh holding platform; Figure 3 shows an open-mesh cover platform being lowered over the hamburgers on the lower holding platform; Figure 4 shows both of the platforms and the hamburgers ready to be immersed in the frying liquid; Figure 5 is a perspective view, partially broken away, showing the platforms and the hamburgers immersed in the frying liquid; Figure 6 shows the platform and the hamburgers raised out of the liquid;; Figure 7 shows one of the deep-fried hamburgers being removed from the holding platform onto a waiting hamburger bun; Figure 8 is a tiop view of the apparatus with the mesh cover platform raised; Figure 9 is a fragmentary plan view of the holding platform; Figure 10 is a cross sectional view of the apparatus taken along the line 10-10 of Fig. 1; Figure 11 is a fragmentary perspective view of a portion of the level linkage between the two mesh platforms; Figure 12 is a cross sectional view of the apparatus with the covered platform lowered into position over the holding platform; and Figure 13 is a fragmentary perspective view of a portion of Fig. 12 showing the lever linkage.

In the drawing the number 1 5 designates a liquid-holding receptacle which includes a front wall 16, right and left side walls 1 7 and 18, a rear wall 1 9 (Fig. 5) and a bottom wall 20) (Fig.

10). Drain board 21 extends upwardly from the left side wall 17 at a slight angle from the vertical, and a control console 22 is mounted on the rear wall.

A serpentine heating element 23 is positioned in the bottom of the cavity provided by the receptacle and includes terminals 23a and 23b (Fig. 1 2) which extend into the control console 22. The control console includes thermostat 24 with an on-off switch for controlling the heating element, a thermostat on-off light 25, and a switch-on switch-off light 26. An open-mesh holding platform 28 is sized to be lowered within the cavity of the receptacle, and an open-mesh cover platform 29 which has a similar shape is hingedly secured to the holding platform.

Referring to Figs. 11 and 13, a channel-shaped bracket 30 is mounted on one side of the holding patform 28, and an eye-bolt 31 extends outwardly from the channel. Link 32 is secured to the cover platform 29 and includes a hooked end portion 32a which extends through the eyebolt. Lever handle 33 is also secured to the cover platform for rotating the cover platform from the raised position illustrated in Figs. 1, 2, and 11 to the lowered position illustrated in Figs. 4 and 13.

When the cover platform is in its raised position the end portion 32a of the link 32 engages the shank of the eye-bolt as shown in Fig. 11. A perforated rim 34 extends downwardly from the periphery of the cover platform and engages the holding platform when the cover platform is lowered so that the cover platform is spaced the desired distance above the holding platform to accommodate the height of the hamburger.

Fig. 2 illustrates a plurality of hamburger patties 35 being loaded onto the holding platform, and Fig. 3 illustrates the cover platform 29 being lowered over the hamburgers. The hamburgers are enclosed by the holding platform and the cover platform in Fig. 4, and the hamburgers are then lowered into the liquid 36 (Fig. 5) in the receptacle. Four somewhat Ushaped support posts 37 extend upwardly from the bottom wall 20 of the receptacle for supporting the platforms above the heating element 23.

Fig. 1 2 illustrates the preferred dimensions for a receptacle designed to hold a single layer of hamburgers. The depth of the cavity of the receptacle is 4-+ inches and the depth of the liquid is 3-2 inches. The space between the holding platform and the cover platform is 3 inch and the distance from the cover platform to the surface of the liquid is 1 inch.

Fig. 9 illustrates the use of the holding platform 28 with rectangular patties 38 as well as round patties 35.

After the hamburgers are cooked to the desired doneness, the platforms and the hamburgers are raised out of the liquid as shown in Fig. 7, the cover platform is rotated to its Fig. 7 position and each hamburger 35 can be removed from the holding platform directly to an open hamburger bun 39.

It is understood that this exemplary apparatus or any other specific deep-frying apparatus, is not claimed as part of this invention.

3. The exemplary liquid The liquid in which my hamburgers are deep-fried is preferably prepared from a natural beef stock base having approximately the same liquidity, flavor, and color as the cooked juice of the hamburger meat. Since the commercial supply of raw natural beef stock either liquid or condensed may not be sufficient to supply the quantity needed for deep-frying the quantities of hamburgers used by the fast-food operators, there are many commercial preparations available as substitutes for the natural beef stock. By using such ingredients as hydrolyzed vegetable protein, gelatin, monosodium glutamate, sugar, caramel color, citric acid, yeast extract, salt, tomatoes, and various food flavorings, the commercial preparations offer several acceptacle substitutes and/or supplements for natural beef juice.The important consideration is that the exemplary liquid be either natural beef juice or its equivalent in taste, color, and liquidity, made from foods such as those mentioned above.

4. Five exemplary cooking temperatures.

There are five levels of doneness that the hamburger market desires. They are, along with the approximate internal temperatures that produce and control them, the following: well-done at 170 , medium-well at 160 , medium at 150 , medium-rare at 140 , and rare at 130 .

It should be noted that my higest exemplary cooking temperature of 170 is 42 under the steam point of 212". In my preferred embodiments I stay as far as possible away from the cellrupturing temperature of 212". The reason for this is that the cycling ranges of the thermostats that regulate most cooking apparatuses are highly unpredictable and unreliable. Some of them, for example, that theoretically have a range of 10 over and under the switch-on switch-off point, actually may have a range of 40 , or more, over and under the switch-point.So, to keep my hamburgers from ever being subjected to temperatures of 212 and over, I prefer to keep my highest deep-frying temperature at 170 .

It is the primary and principal objective of this invention to reduce juice levels to a minimum while maintaining the fast-food production ideals of speed, simplicity, and uniformity as outlined theretofore. This objective is achieved for the five exemplary levels of doneness by using a cook time of less than 5-minutes with the five respectively accompanying cooking temperatures shown in the following table:: Heat of Aprox. percent Doneness Level Cooking Liquid Juice Loss Well-done 170 10% Medium-well 160 7 Medium 150 55 Medium-rare 140' 1 Rare 130 0 to plus 1% to 9% While these juice-loss results are proximate, they are fairly representative of what may be expected under the variable conditions (such as, fat-to-protein ratios, cooking-liquid ingredient ratios, and precision in maintaining liquid heat levels) contributing to finished hamburger results.

While in the foregoing detailed descriptions of specific embodiments of the invention were set forth, for the purpose of illustration, it is to be understood that many of the details herein given may be varied considerably by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

Claims (11)

1. A method of deep-frying meat, or a meat patty, comprising immersing the meat in a liquid that is the approximate equivalent in liquidity, flavor, and color of the natural juice of said meat, and maintaining the temperature of the liquid between 1 28 F and 212"F.

2. The method of Claim 1, in which said cooking temperature is maintained within the range of 128 to 135 while said meat or meat patty is being cooked.

3. A method of cooking uncooked cold hamburger comprising, in sequence and combination, the steps of: immersing the hamburgers within a hated Iqiuid that is the approximate equivalent in liquidity, flavor, and color, of natural cooked hamburger juice; maintaining the temperature of said liquid at the doneness temperature level under 212 desired in the final cooked hamburger, thereby creating the conditions that allow a convection heat-transmission system to exchange massenergy between the free juices of said hamburger and said heated liquid, whereby the exchanging of mass-energy heats between said hamburger juice and said liquid can take place between said juices and said liquid on a true like-phase for like-phase basis, thus conversing the hamburger weight mass of said hamburger within said hamburger.

4. A method of cooking hamburger comprising: deep-frying in an encompassing and direct contact liquid that is the approximate equivalent of natural cooked hamburger juice; Maintaining said liquid within the rare to well-done temperature-doneness levels within the range of 1 30'F to 1 70'F, thereby:: creating a temperature climate that minimizes the contractile range of beef muscle cells; eliminating the extreme contractile muscle cramps and hypercontractile activity that causes cellular juice-expelling squeezings and contractions in hamburger muscle cells, and thereby also keeping juice-purged intercellular passageways open, and thus permitting and promoting the return flow of juice from said encompassing liquid; maximizing the function of convection; minimizing the functions of conduction and radiation; providing a heat-transmission system that functions on a like-phase for like-phase basis, thus exchanging mass-energy between said juice and said liquid on a substantially equal weight for equal weight basis, and reducing juice loss, within the five market-required hamburger doneness levels, to a percentage of original uncooked weight ranging from 0% to 10%.

5. The method of claim 4 in which the temperature of the liquid is maintained within the range of 1 28 F to 1 35 F and the juice weight of said hamburgers is increased by 1% to 9% during cooking.

6. A process for reducing and/or eliminating juice-weight loss in cooking hamburgers comprising, in combination, the steps of: (a) immersing hamburgers in direct physical contact with, and within, a liquid of like-phase and approximate flavor and color equivalents as their natural cooked juices; (b) heating said liquid to a temperature level under 212 ; whereby said immersing and heating accomplishes the (i) exchanging of mass-energy heats between the free juice in said hamburgers and said liquid, with said exchange.

(ii) functioning largely via convection with no barrier between said hamburger and said liquid; thereby, in turn (iii) maintaining within said hamburgers, juice of the approximate liquidity, flavor, and color of said natural cooked cooked juices; (c) timing said cooking hamburgers in relation to the doneness levels and time limits desired by fast-food operators, thereupon (d) removing said hamburgers from said liquids.

7. A process for improving the quality, health-giving, operational, and heat-utilization properties of cooked hamburgers comprising: immersing said hamburgers in an approximately 95% water liquid that has approximately the same liquidity, flavor, and color of said hamburgers' own cooked juices; cooking them in said liquid at temperatures under 212", thereby preventing evaportion of said juices by steam; maintaining original flavor of said hamburgers by heat-exchange via convection heattransmission between said juices and said liquid, both having the same flavor; reducing collagen losses as said temperatures are reduced, and even eliminating said losses when said temperature of said liquid is at or slight above 128 ;; retaining tenderness of said hamburgers by retaining said juice and/or said liquid within said hamburger via the juice-retaining operations of said process; eliminating the burnt-tissue causes of carcinogenic formations with cooking temperatures and liquidities in said liquid that prevent burning; matching the speed of cooking required by fast-food operators by an encompassing liquid heat that presses against said hamburgers from all sides; accomplishing superior operational simplicity by eliminating manual manipulation of said hamburgers during said cooking; producing superior uniformity in said cooked hamburgers by eliminating individual manipulation of said hamburgers during said cooking; determining internal, invisible, doneness levels of said cooking hamburger by observing the outward visible polyp formations on the surfaces of said immersed hamburgers;; reducing energy used to cook said hamburgers by approximately 50% versus that used in prior-art processes; increasing the efficiency of heat-energy utilization by surrounding and encompassing said hamburgers with said cooking liquid from all sides and not dissipating its heat in the atmosphere; holding finished cooked hamburgers, while they await sale, by keeping them immersed in said cooking liquid, whereby original doneness heat levels and most of the doneness juice levels are maintained.

8. The process of cooking hamburgers by deep-frying comprising the steps of: (a) preparing a liquid that is the approximate equivalent in liquidity, flavor, and color, as the natural cooked hamburger juice; (b) pouring said liquid into an apparatus capable of heating said liquid and keeping said hamburgers separately immersed in said liquid during deep-frying; (c) heating said liquid to a temperature level under 212", at which it is desired to have the temperature that determines the level of doneness of the fully cooked hamburgers; (d) immersing said hamburgers in said temperature-level-of-doneness liquid; (e) maintaining said temperature level in said liquid during cooking; (f) holding said immersed hamburgers in said liquid until their internal temperatures have reached said doneness-level temperatures;; (g) removing said doneness-level temperatured hamburgers from said liquid.

9. The process of claim 8 in which said doneness is determined by observing the size of polyps formed on the surfaces of said immersed cooking hamburgers.

10. The process of cooking hamburgers to a rare doneness level and a zero loss or net increase of juice-weight, comprising the steps of: (a) providing a vessel of sufficient depth for holding and heating a liquid in which to deep-fry hamburgers; (b) filling said vessel, to a sufficient depth for immersing hamburgers, with liquid beef stock and/or its flavor and color equivalents; (c) heating said liquid to a temperature level within the 7" temperature zone between 128 and 135"; (d) immersing frozen uncooked hamburgers in said heated liquid; (e) holding said hamburgers in separated condition while immersed in said heated liquid; (f) allowing a duration of less than 5-minutes for said immersed hamburgers to reach a rare doneness level; ; (g) judging the final cooking time, doneness level, and zero hamburger loss or net increase, when said polyps generally reach a diameter of about 1/8".

(h) removing said polyp-surfaced, rare-done, zero-juiceloss, or juice-weight-increased hamburgers from their immersion within said heated liquid.

11. A method of preparing meat substantially as herein described.