Thermograms of the combined High Hydrostatic Pressure and Sous-vide treated Longissimus dorsi of pork

Abstract

In this work, slices of Longissimus dorsi of pork was used as raw material to establish the effects of the sous-vide technology and the high hydrostatic pressure treatments (and their combinations) on meat. The state of the proteins in meat has a very important effect on several quality parameters of the product, such as weight loss, water holding capacity, organoleptic properties. Therefore it is important to follow and analyse the denaturation of the protein content during food processing. The samples were cooked sous-vide (60 °C, 5-480 minutes) or pressurized (100-600 MPa, 5 minutes, room temperature). Also two steps treatments were studied combining both technologies, applying high hydrostatic pressure treatment (300 or 600 MPa, 5 minutes, room temperature) after or previous to sous-vide cooking (60 °C, 30 minutes). The changes in the condition of meat proteins were followed by a differential scanning calorimeter. The DSC curves were analysed using the unit's own software where denaturation heat was determined. Thermograms show through the change of the sample's protein state the dissimilar effect of the treatments. Using the Polar Qualification System -previously proved to be effective with NIR measurements- the spectral information was reduced to a two dimensional polar co-ordinate system where each DSC curve is represented by a "quality point". As a new experiment the applied PQS data reduction method compared to the traditional thermal analysis data processing gave us less information on the differences of our samples although the results are promising as we were able to detect the same trends and characteristics.