Ready To Eat (RTE) Meatballs with Natural MSG Sources as Delicacy Potency in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has developed ready to eat (RTE) food in several years along the high activities of the consumers and needs of delicious, fast, and nutritious foods. One of the popular RTE foods in Indonesia is meatball. The common seasoning used in the RTE meatballs is monosodium glutamate (MSG). However, MSG as the primary seasoning of RTE meatballs reported that it contains health risk potency for consumers which correlated to food safety issues. Discovering natural MSG sources from Indonesian herbs can be a delicacy potency for RTE meatballs as well as potentially replace MSG in practices. Natural seasoning could be found in several species of plants. Pack of reference in this review would be something that beneficial to develop further research of RTE meatballs using natural MSG sources. The hurdle technology between retort packaging and addition of natural food enhancer will be a great discovering to keep the quality of ready to eat meatballs during storage or distribution. Kinds of plant have to be analyzed by "Etnobotani" study to identified the glutamic compound which could give the "umami" taste when addes into food such MSG.