Engineering processes in meat products and how they influence their biophysical properties

Area of Science:

• Food Engineering
• Meat Science
• Biophysics

Background:

• Cooking meat involves complex biophysical processes affecting water and fat retention.
• Understanding these properties is crucial for optimizing meat product quality and yield.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review food engineering aspects of meat cooking, focusing on water and fat holding.
• To discuss emerging mild cooking technologies (high pressure, electro-heating) in relation to meat's biophysical properties.
• To compare water and fat loss mechanisms in different meat products and cooking methods.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on meat biophysics and cooking technologies.
• Analysis of water and fat loss mechanisms, including capillary forces and Darcy's law.
• Discussion of high-pressure processing, radio frequency (RF) cooking, and ohmic heating.

Main Results:

• Capillary forces dominate water holding, while Darcy's law governs water and fat flow.
• Beef burgers exhibit higher fat loss than emulsion sausages, increasing with fat content.
• Pressure-driven water loss is more significant than evaporation during pan-frying.
• Novel methods (high pressure, RF, ohmic heating) provide volumetric heating, reducing cooking times and losses, thus improving yield.

Conclusions:

• Emerging mild cooking technologies offer significant advantages over conventional methods for meat processing.
• Optimizing cooking parameters based on biophysical properties can enhance meat product quality and reduce processing losses.
• High-pressure processing shows promise for microbial reduction in ready-to-eat meat products.