The study was carried out to enumerate the effect of thermal process variables on the losses of some B vitamins and moisture from roasted beef and pork of various sizes in a hot air oven. The roasting temperature and time of both samples were varied from 100‐160°C and 15 min to 1 h, respectively. Thiamin losses were between 20‐40% (0.116‐0.232 mg/100 g) in pork and between 15‐25% (0.006‐0.011 mg/100 g) in beef at the same period. The loss of riboflavin was between 10‐25% (0.019‐0.047 mg/100 g) in beef when compared with the 15‐40% (0.023‐0.061 mg/100 g) in pork. Niacin was more stable than other vitamins at all temperature‐time combinations used. The losses of niacin ranged from between 5‐10% (0.193‐0.386 mg/100 g) in beef and 10‐ 16% (0.431‐0.689 mg/100 g) in pork. Also, moisture losses from pork (22‐45%) were greater than from beef (15‐30%) during the same period of roasting. Generally, the losses of thiamin and riboflavin appeared to be closely dependent on both heat and loss of moisture (or drip) and sample size. However, the values of niacin losses were considerably less than thiamin, riboflavin and moisture losses, and no strong dependence of niacin loss on heat was observed. The results also confirmed higher retention of these vitamins as the ratio of the mass of meat to its exposed surface area increases.

This study was conducted to evaluate the influence of relative humidity, endpoint temperature and period of cold storage on some mechanical and sensory properties of smoked chicken sausage. Weight changes, cooking losses and emulsifying capacity of the processed samples were determined. During heat processing and smoking, the internal temperature of samples increased more rapidly at a relative humidity of 70 or 80% than at 40%, due to the enhanced heat transfer coefficient of the condensing steam and the temperature differential between the surface and center temperatures of the sausage samples. Consequently, processing time was shorter, but the weight of samples increased by about 1.5% during the first 15 min of heat processing at 97C. As the relative humidity in the smokehouse increased from 40 to 80%, both the weight loss, emulsifying capacity, compression and penetration stresses decreased from 11.1 to 7.5%, 28.2 to 27.4 mL oil/100 mg protein, 2.14 to 1.68kg/cm2 and 1.36 to 1.15 kg/cm2, respectively, while the cooking losses decreased from 11.1 to 7.5% when the samples were held at an endpoint temperature of 70C for the same period. The cold storage results showed that both the compression and penetration stresses decreased as the period of storage increased or as the humidity in the smokehouse increased. The sensory scores indicated that all the sausage samples were acceptable within 4 weeks of frozen storage. Firmness and color scores decreased as humidity increased; however, as the period of storage increased, scores for firmness increased, and color, juiciness and flavor scores decreased.