Webbox Natural Sausage Colour Change

A few of our devoted customers have been asking us about the difference in colour between the inside and outside of our natural sausages. Not to worry though Webbox fans; this isn’t harmful to pets in any way and is simply a result of the cooking process. Our sausages are cooked with high heat from the outside in, so the outside is exposed to a higher temperature for a longer period of time. The change in colour comes from when the meat is cooked and is the result of the reaction between the meat and oxygen. This causes myoglobin in red meat to lose its red colour.

The proteins in white meat react kind of like egg whites when cooked and become more opaque. If the sausages were cooked for a long period of time then the colour change would be seen throughout the whole diameter of the product. Think of this like cooking a steak. A rare steak is cooked for a shorter time than a well-done steak, so becomes brown on the outside but stays pink in the middle. A well-done steak goes brown the whole way through but still remains darker on the outside because that is where the heat is applied.

As well as reacting with oxygen, the ingredients in the sausages react with each other when mixed and cooked. The copper added to the sausage within our added vitamins and minerals also reacts with oxygen and gives the meat a greenish hue. But copper is an essential nutrient in the diet so must be added to make sure our sausages are nutritionally complete.