Study of mass transfer during osmotic treatment of chicken cuts with different salt solutions

Abstract Potassium chloride (KCl) can be used as a substitute for NaCl in meat products. The aim of this work was to study the mass transfer (MT) during osmotic treatment of chicken breast cuts immersed in salt solutions of varying amounts of NaCl and KCl. The experiments were carried out using salt solutions of three different formulations: (A) 100% NaCI, (B) 50% NaCl and 50% KCl, and (C) 100% KCl; solutions were kept under stirring, containing 1:10 (m/m) of salt; solution temperature was of about 1 °C. MT was characterized by evaluating water gain (WG), salt gain (SG), weight gain (WG) and apparent diffusion coefficient of water (Dap) of chicken parts. The results showed that substitution of NaCI for KCI was effective, since with formulation (B) chicken meat showed higher salt absorption in comparison to the formulation (A). At the end of 6 hours of curing the samples showed an WG increase between 10.5% and 11.0%, with no significant differences between the treatments. Samples treated with formulation (B) had higher SG values, totaling 3.77 g salt 100 g -1 of initial sample and consequently led to a higher apparent diffusion coefficient of water in the meat. Treatment with formulation (A) led to lower WG and GS parameters when compared with the other formulations due to less intense osmotic effect caused by this.