Effect of microwave oven processing, hot air oven cooking, curing and polyphosphate treatment on physico-chemical, sensory and textural characteristics of buffalo meat products

Abstract

Study on effect of microwave (MW) processing as compared to hot air oven (HAO) cooking, curing and polyphosphate (PP) treatment on pH, cooking loss, sensory and textural characteristics of buffalo meat (controlled and treated) products namely shami kabab, boty kabab and patties, was conducted and it was found that treatment of curing combined with PP on controlled meat; increased pH from 5.70 to 6.12, reduced percent cooking loss from 17.5 to 10.3%. Processing methods had no significant effect on pH of meat products. It was observed that colour and tenderness improved in case of MW oven (sensory scores for colour on Hedonic scale were 7.4, 7.3 and 7.8 for MW 6.4, 6.3 and 6.4 for HAO cooking for three products). The positive peak forces were greater for three products for HAO as compared to MW oven in textural analysis (by texture analyser. -HD, using guillotine knife). MW oven reduced the time of cooking as compared to HAO and it caused uniform heating of meat products (10 min. for MW and 30 min. at 180°C for HAO). Curing and PP treatment further improved the tenderness of three products over controlled samples. However, flavour was better in case of HAO product due to exessive heating effect.