EFFECTS OF COMBINED WATER COOKING–VACUUM COOLING WITH WATER ON PROCESSING TIME, MASS LOSS AND QUALITY OF LARGE PORK HAM

Abstract

ABSTRACT The catering system of pork ham is normally a cook–chill system, which is based on the full cooking of pork ham followed by chilling. In order to obtain large pork ham with high quality and safety, a novel method was developed in this work, i.e., combined water cooking–vacuum cooling with water (immersion vacuum cooling) (WC+VW). The effects of WC+VW on processing time, mass loss and quality of large pork ham were evaluated by comparing them with those of four traditional pork ham processing methods, i.e., dry air cooking combined with air blast cooling (DAC+AB), dry air cooking combined with cold room cooling (DAC+CR), wet air cooking combined with air blast cooling (WAC+AB) and wet air cooking combined with cold room cooling (WAC+CR). WC+VW achieved the shortest processing time, resulting from the shortest time of vacuum cooling with water (308.0 min). Furthermore, present results showed that WC+VW could produce mass loss and quality of large pork ham comparable to those of the four traditional processing methods.