INFLUENCE OF ENZYMATIC TREATMENT AND MIXING ON HARDNESS AND COOKING LOSSES FOR PORK MUSCLE

The production of meat products witnessed great development in recent years, a necessary condition in the context of dynamic change of the population lifestyle. On the other hand, many existing products in the market are not optimal in terms of innocuousness, multitude of additives used making consumers reluctant to be and to turn our attention to eating fresh meat. To meet the requirements, therefore meat should provide outstanding sensory properties, of which a significant relevance it is the tenderness and the juiciness. It is known that meat toughness and its ability to retain water are correlated with the phases of post-slaughter meat and biochemically changes that occurring these phases. This study aims to follow the addition of proteolytic enzymes and mixing operation influence on the development of pig muscle hardness and cooking losses, starting at 2 hours post-slaughter, over a period of 14 days. Following experiments it was found that injection of enzymes, and the association of enzymatic treatment mixing generated to reduce muscle tissue hardness, assessed by determining the cutting forces, and reducing the losses associated with heat treatment. Thus, the samples without heating treatment, the cutting force has the following evolution: on the first day post-slaughter of 13.19 kgf for the control sample and injected with enzyme sample, 10.61 kgf for injected and mixed sample; at three days post-slaughter 20.88 kgf for control sample, 16.83 kgf for injected sample and 15.49 kgf for injected and mixed sample; at 14 day post-slaughter to 10.42 kgf for control sample, 6.85 kgf for enzymatically treated sample, and 5.66 kgf for injected and mixed sample. When the meats was heat-treated, we registered similar developments but with lower values. Thermal losses increased with the evolution to the maximum rigidity, then fell to maturation, the biggest losses occurring to the controls samples and lowest in injected and mixed samples.