Oxidation in pre-cooked minced pork as influenced by chill storage of raw muscle

During storage for four days at 4 °C of pre-cooked minced pork, lipid oxidation measured as thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and as hexanal by solid phase microextraction was found to depend on the level of lipid hydroperoxides rather than on the TBARS in the raw muscle (M. Longissimus dorsi). Storage for up to six days at 4 °C, prior to mincing and cooking, resulted in a decrease in lipid hydroperoxides measured as conjugated dienes and in increasing TBARS-value in the raw muscle, and in a pre-cooked product with better oxidative stability. The correlation coefficient between accumulation of TBARS and hexanal in the pre-cooked meat was 0.98, indicating that the new technique using solid phase microextraction with subsequent GC-analysis for determination of hexanal can be used as an alternative technique to describe lipid oxidation in pre-cooked meat.