Or anyone. :-)

If hotdogs and lunch meats and so forth have already been cooked, why do they turn color and release water and fats and so forth if I cook them?

My suspicion is that they're not already pre-cooked, but rather they have enough spices, etc., in them so that they don't go bad under normal storage conditions. True?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.

I guess I wasn't too clear.

I understand that when meat is cooked, the proteins lose water and get tough and stringy, and the fats liquify. You sort-of made my point for me in the sirloin example - if a good hot dog is already cooked when I take it out of the package, why does it swell up, split, get greasy, etc., etc., when I cook it in the microwave? Hamburger doesn't do that after it's been cooked.

<Googliegoo>

[link|http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Hot-Dog.html|How Hot Dogs Are Made].

The typical raw hot dog is a pink, cylindrical-shaped piece of meat. It is about 1.6 oz (45.36 g) on average and contains anywhere from 0.175-0.245 oz (5-7 g) of protein. It also contains about 0.455 oz (13 g) of fat, 450 mg of sodium and 150 calories. Since hot dogs are meat products, they are an excellent source of nutrients including iron, zinc, niacin, riboflavin, and B vitamins. When hot dogs are made using pork meat, they are good source of thiamin. Since they are a pre-cooked food, they are less prone to spoilage than other types of meat products. This makes them one of the safest meat products available.

[...]

Cooking

* 3 The linked hot dog strands are then conveyed to a large smokehouse. Here, they are thoroughly cooked under controlled conditions. The manufacturer has the opportunity at this point to impart a different flavor on the hot dogs by using a variety of smoke sources. The cooking times vary depending on the recipe however, typically it takes about an hour.

[...]

Since [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_(food)|smoking] can be a low temperature process (if it takes an hour, that would argue for low temperatures too), perhaps that's another reason why they seem to change so much when I cook them (at higher temperatures).

So, I dunno. Either they use lower temperatures than I do (which is certainly possible - e.g. it's possible to brown hot dogs in a skillet without having them do much more than get slightly brown and greasy), or perhaps the "casings" are so tough that the meat can't expand and give up the fat and so forth when it's smoked/cooked.

I dunno.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.