A fast drying method for the production of salted-and-dried meat

Abstract The objective of this work was to investigate the application of microwave vacuum drying (MWVD) as a fast drying method to produce salted-and-dried beef cuts. Moreover, aiming to reduce the sodium content in the meat product, the partial replacement of NaCl by KCl during the salting stage was also investigated. To this end, beef cuts were salted by immersion in one of three saline solutions before drying: Solution A- 100% NaCl; Solution B- 75% NaCl and 25% KCl; and (iii) Solution C- 50% NaCl and 50% KCl. The proposed MWVD method was compared with convective drying (CD) and vacuum drying (VD) in terms of drying kinetics as well as physicochemical and mechanical properties of obtained samples. The average drying times for the samples to reach water activity of 0.7 was more than 40 h for CD, 36 h for VD, and 0.45 h for MWVD. The salting with different solutions had no influence in these times. Moreover, the MWVD samples presented higher values of porosity and rehydration capacity. Thus, the results presented in this study have technological importance for the design of new industrial technologies to produce salted-and-dried meat, as charque and jerked beef, with lower sodium content.

摘要 本研究旨在探讨微波真空干燥（microwave vacuum drying, MWVD）作为快速干燥工艺，用于制备盐渍牛肉干块的应用可行性。为降低肉制品的钠含量，本研究同时考察了盐渍阶段以氯化钾（KCl）部分替代氯化钠（NaCl）的效果。为此，将牛肉块分别浸入三种盐水溶液中完成盐渍处理：溶液A为100%氯化钠（NaCl）；溶液B为75%氯化钠（NaCl）与25%氯化钾（KCl）的混合液；溶液C为50%氯化钠（NaCl）与50%氯化钾（KCl）的混合液。本研究将微波真空干燥工艺与对流干燥（convective drying, CD）、真空干燥（vacuum drying, VD）从干燥动力学以及所得样品的理化与机械特性两方面开展对比分析。当样品水分活度降至0.7时，对流干燥组的平均干燥时长超过40小时，真空干燥组为36小时，微波真空干燥组仅为0.45小时；不同盐渍溶液对上述干燥时长无显著影响。此外，微波真空干燥制备的样品展现出更高的孔隙率与复水能力。综上，本研究结果对于开发生产低钠含量盐渍肉制品（如查尔克肉干与风干牛肉干）的新型工业技术具有重要的技术应用价值。