Journal
MEAT SCIENCE
Volume 92, Issue 4, Pages 795-804Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.meatsci.2012.07.003
Keywords
Beef; Meat quality; Very fast chilling; Cold shortening; Electron microscopy
Categories
Funding
- Ministry of Agriculture of the People's Republic of China [CARS-38-02A, 200903012]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
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Objectives of the current study were to evaluate meat ultra-structure and tenderness variation at different chilling regimes and aging times. Hot boned longissimus lumborum of 18 Chinese crossbred cattle were divided into 4 portions per side. One portion underwent very fast chilling (VFC, at -21 degrees C to achieve core temperature of 0 degrees C, then transferred to another incubator at 2 degrees C), whereas other treatments were held at 14, 7 and 0 degrees C for 10 h postmortem, respectively. At 10 h postmortem, all muscles were vacuum aged at 2 degrees C for 21 d. Cold shortened muscles had greatest absolute amount of tenderization during aging. VFC caused lowest sarcomere length, with super-contractions, ruptured Z-lines and myofibril cleavage, but improved myofibril fragmentation index (MFI), with no significant negative effect on toughness. Overall, aging improved the meat quality of cold shortened beef. Moreover, it should be prudent in some applications to apply VFC to excised muscles from a food safety perspective, and to improve tenderness compared to cold-shortened muscles. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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