Plasmalogen fingerprint alteration and content reduction in beef during boiling, roasting, and frying

Plasmalogens are dietary phospholipids with beneficial health effects. In this work, plasmalogen characteristics and changes in beef during boiling, frying, and roasting were comprehensively investigated by liquid-chromatography-mass spectrometry. The alteration of plasmalogen fingerprint during cooking processes was found by untargeted omics approach, in which time of boiling, temperature of roasting, and meat core/surface of frying were responsible for the observed variations. Moreover, the targeted determination of representative plasmalogen species showed significant loss with a temperature- and time-dependent manner in roasting and frying. And frying even showed an extra loss in meat surface compared with core. Furthermore, an artificial neural network-based predictive model elucidated the dynamics of plasmalogen species during cooking. Finally, batter-coating pretreatment was performed to show its protection against plasmalogens loss during frying. These results might provide a potential strategy to better control and improve the quality of functional foodstuffs during cooking processes.