Abstract
The turkey neck is a cut with a higher proportion of meat when compared to the neck of other poultry, abundant in red fibers and is little valued by the food industry. It is possible to add value to this by-product through dry salting, an inexpensive and suitable method for the production of dried meat products, such as charqui. Turkey neck meat was submitted to the dry salting under different temperatures for study their salt gain and water loss on the flat plate geometry, using derived equations of Fick's Law, beyond the influence of the process in the physicochemical characteristics. The highest water loss (33.99%) occurred at 10 °C, while the highest salt gain (9.47%) was observed at 15 °C. The empirical model presented a good fit to the experimental data. Apparent diffusivities were between 1.02 x 10-10 m2/s and 1.18 x 10-10 m2/s. The dry salting promoted small decrease in pH, the darkening of the meat, while shear force increased. After the process, water activity (aw) was 0.74 and 0.79, moisture between 40.14% and 45.97%, and ash residue (12.30% - 14.03%), which characterizes a salt product with similar characteristics of charqui meat. It is possible to estimate the desirable amount of salt, producing a stable food product with a high conservation potential and a wide range of applications for derived salty products.
Highlights
Turkey meat consumption has been linked to its nutritional value because its low cuts have high protein content, low lipid content (1.5% until 3.77%) and low calorie, what contributes with a healthy diet [1, 2]
The aim of this work was to study the kinetics of salt gain and water loss by dry salting in turkey neck meat through the effect of temperature, in addition to determining the apparent diffusion coefficient of salt in the meat, and to characterize the change in pH, color, texture, moisture and ash content of turkey neck meat during the process
The results demonstrate that during the salting the meat's hardness increased, as predicted by Ruiz-Ramírez et al (2005) [53], who associated the increase in hardness to the water loss by the muscle, which in turn is related to the salt content and the pH of the tissue
Summary
Turkey meat consumption has been linked to its nutritional value because its low cuts (breast, wing, thigh, and drumstick) have high protein content (between 19.42% until 20.84%), low lipid content (1.5% until 3.77%) and low calorie, what contributes with a healthy diet [1, 2]. It is observed that the neck is little valued. It is darker meat, characterized by a higher proportion of red fibers in the muscle, being a product commercialized at a low value [3]. Due to the higher meat proportion when compared with the neck of other poultry, makes it possible to use the turkey neck in other ways.
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