Abstract
This study investigated the effectiveness of cooking processes that incorporated hydrated surface lethality (HSL) steps for ensuring the reduction of Salmonella on the surfaces of small-dimension meat and poultry products cooked using short-duration, high-temperature impingement oven processes. Whole-muscle chicken tenders (3% fat), beef patties (10% and 30% fat), pork patties (10% and 30% fat), and chicken patties (10% and 20% fat) were surface inoculated with a 5-strain mixture of Salmonella to yield 8 log colony-forming units/g, then cooked in a two-zone impingement oven using either dry heat or steam-humidified HSL processes. The HSL steps used steam injection to control the wet-bulb temperature at either 71.1°C or 82.2°C. Dry-heat cooking processes using a dry-bulb temperature of 204.4°C and no steam-injected HSL steps failed to consistently achieve a 6.5 log reduction of Salmonella on chicken tenders and the low-fat patty products (≤10% fat). In contrast, processes incorporating an HSL step using an 82.2°C wet-bulb temperature in one or both zones resulted in ≥6.5 log reductions of Salmonella for all products. Sufficient reductions were achieved regardless of whether this 82.2°C wet-bulb HSL step was incorporated before or after a dry-cook step. Processes that incorporated an HSL step using a 71.1°C wet-bulb temperature in both zones also resulted in reductions ≥6.5 log for all products. Processes using a 71.1°C wet-bulb HSL step in only one zone delivered ≥ 6.5 log reduction for all of the patty products. However, the one-zone 71.1°C HSL step achieved ≥6.5 log reduction in chicken tenders only if used in the first zone of the two-zone oven. When the 71.1°C HSL step was used in the second zone for chicken tenders after using dry heat in the first zone, the target reduction of 6.5 log was not achieved. This research successfully validated approaches to ensure ≥6.5 log reduction of Salmonella on product surfaces.
Highlights
Most meat processors in the United States use Food Safety and Inspection Service Appendix A (USDA, 1999) to ensure sufficient thermal lethality for the myriad array of precooked products that are manufactured every day using countless different cooking processes
Impingement processes were used for this experiment because impingement ovens have the fastest drying rate of any commercially available forced-air convection oven design, representing the practical worst case for rapid dehydration of product surfaces with respect to developing desiccated, heat-resistant Salmonella on the product surface
hydrated surface lethality (HSL) steps using wet-bulb temperatures of 71.1°C or higher in all zones of impingement cooking processes proved effective for ensuring that surface-inoculated Salmonella were subjected to lethal time–temperature combinations under hydrated conditions
Summary
Most meat processors in the United States use Food Safety and Inspection Service Appendix A (USDA, 1999) to ensure sufficient thermal lethality for the myriad array of precooked products that are manufactured every day using countless different cooking processes. The Appendix A guidelines are currently being applied to a vast variety of products that were never investigated in the original study, including smalldimension products cooked in belt-fed, high-capacity, continuous ovens such as impingement ovens that use high-temperature, short-duration processes of less. The need for hydrated product surfaces to promote pathogen lethality is recognized in the 1999 version of Appendix A but only indirectly through humidity guidelines that are impractical for many products. There is a need for a more reliable method to ensure that sufficient reductions of Salmonella are achieved
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