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Title: Effect of immersion chilling and air chilling on texture quality and cook yield of chicken breast tenderlion deboned for hours postmortem

Author
item Zhuang, Hong
item Savage, Elizabeth
item Smith, Douglas
item Berrang, Mark

Submitted to: International Poultry Scientific Forum
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/18/2008
Publication Date: 1/26/2009
Citation: Zhuang, H., Savage, E.M., Smith, D., Berrang, M.E. 2009. Effect of immersion chilling and air chilling on texture quality and cook yield of chicken breast tenderlion deboned for hours postmortem. International Poultry Scientific Forum. 88(Suppl. 1):P215. 205.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Boneless chicken breast fillets (pectoralis major) and tenderloins (pectoralis minor) are common poultry products in retail markets and are used extensively by restaurants and food service. Texture quality of these products could be impacted by poultry processing methods and parameters. Effects of chilling methods on fillets are available in published literature; however, there is a lack of published information of chilling methods effects on tenders. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of carcass chilling methods, water immersion chilling (IC) and air chilling (AC), on sensory texture descriptive profiles, Warner-Bratzler (WB) shear and cook yield of broiler breast tenders deboned at 4h postmortem. Ready-to-cook carcasses (42 days of age) were hot-boned as a pre-chill control, or chilled either by IC (0.3oC, 50 min) or by AC (0.7oC, 150 min). The chilled tenders were removed from the bone at 4h postmortem. Tenders were cooked to an endpoint temperature of 78-80oC. The texture qualities were measured by trained sensory panelists using 0-15 point universal intensity scales and by a TA-XT Plus Texture Analyzer fitted with a Warner-Bratzler shear blade. Our study shows that the average intensity scores for the 12 sensory texture attributes ranged from 1.5 to 5.9, the WB shear averages ranged from 20 to 31 Newton, and the average cook yield was 87%. No differences were found in cook yield between the hot-boned and the chilled samples. The average intensity scores of the texture attributes, cohesiveness, hardness, cohesiveness of mass, rate of breakdown and chewiness, and the average WB shear force values were significantly higher in the hot-boned samples than either of the chilled samples. However, there were no significant differences in the sensory texture profiles, WB shear and cook yield between the immersion-chilled and air-chilled tenders. These results demonstrate that either of IC and AC methods can be used to reduce broiler carcass temperature without losses of chicken breast tender texture quality and cook yield.