CONTROL OF COOKING LOSSES AND TEXTURE BY USING EMULSION TEMPERATURE AND REFLECTION PHOTOMETRY IN FRANKFURTERS MANUFACTURED WITH DIFFERENT FAT AND STARCH LEVELS

摘要

IntroductionChopping process is a critical stage in frankfurters manufacturing that exert a large impact on essential gel properties (e.g., cooking loss, gel texture). Overheating during the emulsification leads to emulsion breakpoint, which increases cooking loss (CL). Thus, chopping time/speed and emulsion temperature (T) must be controlled to prevent undesired losses of yield and quality in frankfurters. According to previous studies (Barbut 1998; Alvarez et al., 2007), T was not always the most accurate chopping end-point predictor, especially in reduced fat meats. These authors observed also that optical reflection values, such as lightness (L*), changed during chopping and that L* was correlated with T, CL and gel firmness, although they did not study the separate effect of processing factors, such as starch and fat levels on the observed correlations. Alvarez et al. (2007) suggested that allowing emulsion overheating during chopping would contribute to confirm that the beginning of a steady decrease in L* during chopping is an accurate indicator of the optimum level of emulsification, while little information is available on optical changes in a wide range of temperature. Therefore, the aim of this work was to study the practical value of reflection photometry and T measured during emulsification as potential indicators of CL and texture in frankfurters within a wide range of emulsion temperatures, and starch and fat concentrations.