Abstract
Abstract The objective of this work was to investigate the application of microwave vacuum drying (MWVD) as a fast drying method to produce salted-and-dried beef cuts. Moreover, aiming to reduce the sodium content in the meat product, the partial replacement of NaCl by KCl during the salting stage was also investigated. To this end, beef cuts were salted by immersion in one of three saline solutions before drying: Solution A- 100% NaCl; Solution B- 75% NaCl and 25% KCl; and (iii) Solution C- 50% NaCl and 50% KCl. The proposed MWVD method was compared with convective drying (CD) and vacuum drying (VD) in terms of drying kinetics as well as physicochemical and mechanical properties of obtained samples. The average drying times for the samples to reach water activity of 0.7 was more than 40 h for CD, 36 h for VD, and 0.45 h for MWVD. The salting with different solutions had no influence in these times. Moreover, the MWVD samples presented higher values of porosity and rehydration capacity. Thus, the results presented in this study have technological importance for the design of new industrial technologies to produce salted-and-dried meat, as charque and jerked beef, with lower sodium content.
Highlights
Salted-and-dried meat products are popular in many countries due to their appreciated sensory characteristics (Collignan et al, 2001; Arnau et al, 2007; Toldrá, 2016)
Examples of these products are the charque and the jerked beef (Shimokomaki et al, 1998; Ojha et al, 2017)
The samples were cut in four equal parts with dimensions of 4.0 × 4.0 × 1.5 cm, labeled, and submitted to one of the following drying methods: (i) convective drying (CD), (ii) vacuum drying (VD), and (iii) microwave vacuum drying (MWVD)
Summary
Salted-and-dried meat products are popular in many countries due to their appreciated sensory characteristics (Collignan et al, 2001; Arnau et al, 2007; Toldrá, 2016). Examples of these products are the charque (a traditional Brazilian meat product) and the jerked beef (which differs from the charque mainly by the use of sodium nitrite) (Shimokomaki et al, 1998; Ojha et al, 2017). The most used drying method for jerked beef production is convective drying
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