Functional properties of marinated chicken breast meat during heating in a pilot-scale radio-frequency oven

Abstract

ABSTRACT Chicken breast meat is traditionally marinated to improve tenderness and juiciness. However, a significant amount of marinade is purged during cooking. It was envisioned that preheating of marinated chicken breast meat would minimize the purge due to presetting the myofibrillar proteins and will give higher cook yield. The preheating was done in a radiofrequency (RF) oven to provide uniform heating within the volume of the product, and to allow extra marinade retention. Two preheating regimens, 20–30°C and 55–60°C were selected. A 3–4% marinade gain was obtained while the meat was preheated in RF with 10% extra marinade but this gain was not significantly different in the four treatments and the control (p > .05). The cooked meat yields were determined as a function of programmed preheating of marinated meat in the RF oven, followed by final cooking of the product in the air impingement oven. The programmed preheated samples at 20–30°C showed higher cook yield (96.11–100.51%) as compared to the control (95.6%). However, all the samples heated at 55–60°C showed higher cook yield (100.57–109.39%). Warner-Bratzler shear tests were performed on cooked samples to determine the quality of RF preheated product, and the quality of the RF-treated product was not much different from that of the product cooked directly in a conventional air oven.