Protein recovered from meat co-products and processing streams as pork meat replacers in Irish breakfast sausages formulations

Abstract

Meat industry co-products are sources of high quality proteins with excellent techno-functional properties and nutritive value based on their amino acid profile. Proteins, recovered from four different sources (blood plasma, exudates, brine solution and stick water), were incorporated as meat protein replacers in a meat based product (Irish breakfast type sausage) for demonstration purposes, at 10 or 20% levels of the total protein content. Plasma proteins at both replacement levels had the most positive effect on the analysed properties, compared to the control. Using plasma at 20% replacement level remarkably improved water holding capacity (19% vs. 17%), cook loss (5% vs. 14%), emulsion stability (9% vs. 14%), and essential amino acid content (48% vs. 47%). For other protein extracts (brines, exudates and stick water) only 10% replacement levels were acceptable to maintain the overall final product quality. A novel scoring system was developed to holistically evaluate the effect of replacers in the final product.