Comparison of Opened Rates and Quality Characteristics of Frozen Baby-clam In-shell Tapes philippinarum Prepared by Different Processing Method

Abstract

We compared two different processing methods for preparing high quality frozen in-shell baby clam products. In the first method, sand and mud were removed from the clams, then they were vacuum packed in polyethylene film, boiled at 97°C for 6 min, and snap frozen in a cold air blast freezer (sample 1). The second processing method was similar, except the boiling process was excluded (sample 2). Both frozen products were boiled for 4 min, and then shucked and minced. Various quality metrics, such as the opening rates of shells, chemical composition, pH, volatile basic nitrogen (VBN), salinity, thiobarbituric acid (TBA), amino-N, total amino acids and free amino acids were measured, and sensory evaluation was conducted. The opening rates of shells of sample 1 and sample 2 were 98.3% and 4.67%, respectively. The proximate composition of sample 1 and sample 2 was 75.2% and 78.7% moisture, 19.7% and 16.2% crude protein, 2.45 and 2.2% crude lipid, 2.8% and 2.1% ash, and 2.1% and 1.9% salinity, respectively. The L, a, b and ⊿E values were similar: 48.6 and 49.2, 3.9 and 3.9, 15.7 and 15.5, and 50.7 and 50.1 for sample 1 and sample 2, respectively. The sensory evaluation score of sample 1 was higher than that of sample 2. Sample 1 was deemed to be superior to sample 2; therefore, we determined that the boiling process is needed for manufacturing high-quality frozen clam products.