Subreddit: r/AskCulinary
User: u/Blue_Cloud_2000
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskCulinary/comments/1ftg1nf/science_behind_bo_vien_vietnamese_meatballs/
Original Post:
Science behind Bo Vien Vietnamese Meatballs
Ingredient Question
I've always blindly followed my mom's recipe for bo vien (Vietnamese Beef Meatballs) and wondered what the point of some of the steps are.
keep the meat ice cold -- the ground beef is seasoned and then frozen in a really thin layer before whipping it in the mixer to make the paste. My mom says that the meat had to be really cold so that the texture when boiled would be chewy, bouncy and firm. Is that true?
add baking powder to the meat -- what does the baking powder do?
tapioca starch slurry -- what does this do -- is this just the binder? Why does substituting corn starch slurry result in a meatball that isn't as chewy?
My Response:
Hi, Vietnamese food scientist here who studied proteins for his PhD dissertation. Phở bò viên là món tôi thÃch nhất!
Cooling down the meat beforehand contracts the muscle proteins, which are then locked into that state when rapidly boiled, giving that chewy texture.
The baking powder increases the pH, which causes the cysteine disulfide bonds in the proteins to scramble. This allows for new bonds to form between proteins, increasing the binding capacity of the meat and further denaturing the proteins for that desired texture. Meat proteins are usually quite globular and linked in linear chains. The higher pH ultimately creates a bigger mess that entangles these proteins together.
Baking powder also contains phosphates, which is often used in sausage making to further bind proteins together. Phosphates bond to the calcium that’s often found in muscle tissue, reducing the gelation temperature of the proteins. This is why adding baking soda is not sufficient in the bò viên production process (which would also increase the pH, but does not contain phosphates).  Â
Tapioca starch contains a higher concentration of amylopectin (a branched starch molecule, versus amylose which is more linear)Â over corn starch, resulting in less dissolution of the starch and higher pasting properties. Tapioca starch gels at a lower temperature than corn starch, which results in stronger binding at lower temperatures. This is essential to counteract the lower initial temperature of the meat, which allows the meatballs to form a strong gel in the starch fraction at near the same temperature as the meat denatures and gels as well.
(I go into more technical detail on this in some of the excerpts on meat in my book on food science:Â https://a.co/d/cEv8qZW)
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