Quality Changes in Sous-Vide Cooked Meat

Sous-vide process is a cooking method for vacuumed products which are placed in a water bath or steam oven at controllable low temperatures and specific long times. This technique is widely used for cooking of meat and meat products which have limited shelf life throughout cold storage. Temperature, time and vacuum parameters used in sous-vide method are effective factors on meat quality. It is realised that meat tenderness increases with this technique due to cooking is performed at low temperatures. For the same reason, more water is retained in the texture and cooking losses are reduced. In addition to this, it is appeared that the sous-vide method provides protection of nutrient components that are water-soluble and/or adversely affected by high temperature applications, so that this method increases the nutritional value of meat. On the other hand, use of controllable cooking temperatures facilitates to reach targeted core temperatures in meat. With the help of homogeneous distribution of heat, even colour formation on meat can be observed. Oxidative reactions in the product are limited by the application of vacuum, so that product quality can be preserved for a long time. The risk of food safety as a result of low temperature applications in sous-vide cooking is eliminated by increasing cooking times. In this review, it is aimed to inform about effects of sous-vide cooking technique on meat quality under the heads of; texture, juiciness and cooking losses, colour, flavour, lipid and protein oxidation and microbial quality. Besides, the effects of sous-vide cooking method on quality parameters, different effects of sous-vide and traditional cooking methods on quality parameters were deeply discussed.