Abstract
Salt-and-dry technique is an artisanal fish conservation method adopted in the Maghreb countries which is based on lowering the water activity. This latter factor is crucial in food preservation, where the relationship between the water activity and the water content of the salted octopus helps control its storage. However, the realization of this processing in controlled conditions is limited by the lack of information regarding the drying time and the behavior towards humidity of this specie. This work describes the drying kinetics by plotting the drying curve (70 ° C; 1.5 m/s) and helps define the salted octopus drying time. Also it presents the desorption and adsorption isotherms at three temperatures which represent the storage temperatures (30, 40 and 50°C) following the gravimetric method. The drying of the salted octopus carried out helped reduce the water activity to a value of 0.63 and the water content of 0.505 g water/g MS during 10 hours. In addition, the sorption curves were experimentally determined and modeled by polynomial regression of order 4. The fitting has given correlation coefficients close to 1 for the three temperatures.
Highlights
Salt-and-dry technique is an artisanal fish conservation method adopted in the Maghreb countries which is based on lowering the water activity
Used in the Maghreb culinary traditions and especially Moroccan, commun octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is a very exploited specie in Morocco, where we find, on one hand, the catch of the deep-sea octopus fishery estimated at 14,637 tons in 2019, and on the other hand, the volume of cephalopods and commun octopus, marketed by the coastal and artisanal fishing fleet reached in weight 48 299 tons for the same year[1]
The effect of salting and drying on the water content and water activity of the octopus is shown in Table 2: Experimental determination of salted octopus sorption isotherms
Summary
Salt-and-dry technique is an artisanal fish conservation method adopted in the Maghreb countries which is based on lowering the water activity. In order to conserve this resource, several types of industrial valorization are adopted in Morocco, in particular, freezing[5], whereas the drying preceded by salting constitutes a process of artisanal valorization which makes it possible to conserve the octopus by reducing its water activity (aw) while improving its organoleptic quality. This artisanal method takes place in nonmastered conditions, and the humidity sorption of salted octopus remains unknown. That is why it is important to study the salted octopus drying in controlled conditions, to determine its drying time and to define its behavior towards air humidity
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