There is currently a lot of interest in the food industry in reducing sodium in products, largely as the result of recommendations in 2010 by the Institute of Medicine for consumers to reduce sodium intake.
Finding sustainable methods of operation and energy consumption rule the day when it comes to the challenges facing the cooking and chilling processes.
Today, most methods of mass cooking and chilling are pretty economical and sufficient for their purpose. However, processors and manufacturers continue to tweak thermal-processing procedures to eliminate remaining challenges.
The OSU Thermal Processing of Ready-to-Eat (RTE) Meat Products short course will occur April 17-19, 2012, on the Ohio State University campus. The agenda for this three-day course is filled with a variety of topics related to all aspects of producing ready-to-eat meat products.
With the increased focus on reducing salt and fat in meat products, what are the challenges that processors face in producing formed products, such as patties, nuggets, etc.?
Since environmental exposure is a major source of Listeria monocytogenes contamination on fully cooked ready-to-eat products, cook-in-the-bag processing has become very important. By not exposing the product to the environment between cooking and packaging, the chance of Lm contamination is eliminated, which reduces the need for some of the antimicrobial agents and the post-packaging pasteurization process to eliminate Lm on ready-to-eat meat products.
Most whole-muscle products today are made using a process that is called either tumbling, massaging or mixing. Regardless of the name of the process, the main idea is to apply
Injection and marination are intended to add solutions to meat to affect product color, texture, flavor, plus protein and water-binding abilities. Even and consistent distribution of these solutions throughout whole-muscle product should be the ultimate goal, and injection can maximize the uniformity of the solution distribution.
The factors affecting slicing yields of meat products differ based upon the nature of the product (i.e., sectioned and formed, emulsified or ground, whole muscle, etc.). Sliceability of sectioned and
