meat, it’s actually got a fairly complex structure In their whole form, muscle fibers resemble thick bundles of telephone cables, where each individual wire inside the bundle is a single juice-filled strand (known as a fibril) constructed of proteins Chop up these cable bundles, as you do when you grind meat, and you end up with a whole bunch of shorter bundles Shorter, but still intact: the protein strands are still held tightly within When salt is applied to the meat, at first some of the juices contained within the muscle fibrils are drawn out through the process of osmosis That’s the tendency for a solution to travel across a permeable membrane in the direction of lower solute concentration to higher concentration (translation: when there’s lot of salt outside of a meat cell and not much inside, water from within the cell will travel out to try and even out the concentration of solutes on the outside and inside) The salt then dissolves in these juices, creating a briny liquid Certain meat proteins, namely myosin, will partially dissolve in the presence of this brine Salted meat at 4 hours and 0 hours Essentially, the bundles of telephone wires become looser, their ends fraying out You can see this happening when you let a chunk of salted meat sit The exterior gets darker and darker as the proteins dissolve This makes it far easier for the proteins to then cross-link when you knead the ground meat Indeed, just by touching salted ground meat versus regular ground meat, you can instantly tell the difference: the salted meat is much stickier SAUSAGE WEIGHT LOSS AT 160°F ... easier for the proteins to then cross-link when you knead the ground meat Indeed, just by touching salted ground meat versus regular ground meat, you can instantly tell the difference: the salted meat is much stickier... Essentially, the bundles of telephone wires become looser, their ends fraying out You can see this happening when you let a chunk of salted meat sit The exterior gets darker and darker as the proteins dissolve