Effects of deboning time and thawing method interaction on sensory descriptive profiles of cooked chicken breast and thigh meat

Abstract

Effects of deboning time and thawing method interaction on sensory quality of cooked chicken meat were evaluated using factorial experiments with factors muscle type (breast and thighs), deboning time (45 min, 2 h, or 24 h), and thawing method (fresh/never freezing/thawing, directly from frozen state, and thawing for 2 or 24 h before cooking). Broiler meat was deboned at three different postmortem times and cooked from four states. Sensory quality of cooked meat was profiled by a trained descriptive panel. Statistical results show that there were no significant deboning and thawing interaction effects (P > 0.05) for sensory descriptive profiles regardless of muscle type. Intensity scores (5.6–7.1) of sensory texture attributes cohesiveness, hardness, rate of break down, and chewiness of early-deboned fillets (≤2 h) was greater than those (4.4–5.5) of 24 h-deboned fillets; however, there were no differences between three deboning times for cooked thighs. Cooking directly from frozen state caused harder thigh meat (5.7) than the other thawing treatments (<5.0); however, there were no difference in cooked fillets between thawing methods. Results indicate that deboning-time effects on sensory profiles are not altered by thawing methods, and vice versa. Deboning time more affects sensory quality of breast fillets, but thawing methods more influence thigh meat.