Effect of Different Cooking Methods on Lipid Oxidation and Microbial Quality of Vacuum‐Packaged Emulsion Products from Chicken

The aim of this work was to study the effect of different cooking methods viz, moist cooking (nuggets), dry cooking (patties) and deep‐fat frying (croquettes) on lipid oxidation and microbial quality of few emulsion‐based meat products from chicken under vacuum packaging conditions during refrigerated storage. When different cooking methods were studied, croquettes were the most affected (P < 0.05) by lipid oxidation as indicated by thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, peroxide value and free fatty acids compared with nuggets or patties. Croquettes had lower (P < 0.05) water activity than nuggets and patties. Total plate counts and psychrotrophic counts remained lower (P < 0.05) throughout the storage for croquettes compared with nuggets or patties. Based on lipid oxidation and microbial quality, it was concluded that moist‐cooked nuggets, dry‐cooked patties and deep‐fat fried croquettes were stable for 40, 60 and 80 days at refrigerated storage under vacuum packaging. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: In the recent years, demand for value‐added, convenience chicken product is increasing throughout the world. In order to meet the consumers' changing lifestyle and their demand for ready‐to‐eat products, food industries are adopting innovative processing and cooking procedures to create a variety of products. However, some of these processing steps and cooking methods may have detrimental effects on different quality attributes of finished products and limit their shelf life. The findings of this work will provide useful information for meat processors about role of processing (comminution), addition of spice mix, different cooking (dry, moist and deep‐fat frying) methods and vacuum packaging in maintaining the quality and enhancing the shelf life of precooked emulsion products. The outcome of this experiment clearly demonstrates that combination of spice mix and vacuum packaging is significantly effective in limiting lipid oxidation and microbial spoilage in chicken emulsion products.