Quality improvement of ground buffalo meat by preblending with sodium ascorbate

Ground buffalo meat (GBM) was preblended with sodium ascorbate (SA) at 0, 300, 400, 500 and 600 ppm level and was examined for its quality changes during refrigerated storage at 4±1 °C. It was observed that GBM containing 500 ppm SA had significantly higher pH, visual colour and odour, lovibond tintometer red colour units (LTCU 'R') and chroma; lower cooking loss, metmyoglobin content and TBARS number as compared with other levels of SA. TBARS number was highly correlated with metmyoglobin and inversely with odour score; visual colour was negatively correlated with metmyoglobin, aerobic mesophiles count and psychrotrophs plate count. SA at 500 ppm is found to be optimum level for preblending which extended the shelf life of GBM from 4 to 8 days under refrigerated storage.