Effect of Using Vegetable Powders as Nitrite/Nitrate Sources on the Physicochemical Characteristics of Cooked Pork Products

Abstract

This study investigated the potential for using vegetable powders as a natural replacement for sodium nitrite and their effects on the physicochemical characteristics of alternatively cured pork products. We analyzed pork products subjected to four treatments: control (0.015% sodium nitrite), Chinese cabbabe powder (CCP) treatment (0.4% Chinese cabbage powder), radish powder (RP) treatment (0.4% radish powder), and spinach powder (SP) treatment (0.4% spinach powder). Among the vegetable powders prepared in this study, SP had the highest (p<0.05) nitrate content, while CCP had the lowest (p<0.05). The cooking yields from these treatments were not significantly different from each other. However, the products with vegetable powders had higher (p<0.05) pH and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances values than the control. Pork products with vegetable powders also showed lower CIE L* values and higher CIE b* values than the nitrite-added control. RP treatment had similar (p>0.05) CIE a* values to the control, while SP treatment had the lowest (p<0.05) CIE a* values. The residual nitrite content was lower (p<0.05) in the vegetable powder added pork products than in the control, although nitrosyl hemochrome and total pigment contents in the CCP and RP treatments were similar (p>0.05) to those in the control. The control, CCP, and RP treatments showed curing efficiencies greater than 80%, indicating that CCP and RP would be promising potential replacements for sodium nitrite. The results of this study suggest that RP may be a suitable natural replacement for sodium nitrite to produce alternatively cured meat products, compared to other leafy vegetable powders.

Effects of radish powder concentration and incubation time on the physicochemical characteristics of alternatively cured pork products

“…All alternatively cured pork products had significantly higher (p < 0.05) pH than the controls, except for treatment 6 (0.30% celery powder and 4 hours incubation time) ( Table 3). Jeong et al [14] reported similar results; they found that cured pork products treated with Chinese cabbage, radish, or spinach powder showed higher pH than nitrite-added controls. In our study, products treated with 0.15% radish powder (treatments 1 and 2) had higher pH than those treated with 0.30% radish powder (treatments 3 and 4) or 0.30% celery powder (treatments 5 and 6), suggesting that the pH in alternatively cured products decreased as the concentration of vegetable powders increased.…”

“…The radish and radish powder had a pH of 5.92 and 5.09, respectively (Table 2). Similarly, Jeong et al [14] found that dried powder prepared from radish grown in the Jeolla-do region of Korea had a pH of 5.14.…”

“…After hot air drying, the radish powder had 55,935 ppm nitrate ion (equivalent to 76,623 ppm sodium nitrate) and 0.09 ppm nitrite ion (equivalent to 0.14 ppm sodium nitrite) ( Table 2). This increase in nitrate and nitrite ion contents could be attributed to the evaporation of moisture due to the drying process [14,22,28].…”

“…Although no alternatives have been found to completely replace synthetic nitrite, some vegetables that contain considerable amounts of nitrate are used today as natural replacements for nitrite/nitrate in alternatively cured processed meat or naturally cured processed meat [4,12]. In previous studies, celery, parsley, Swiss chard, spinach, and cabbage have been found to be suitable natural replacements for synthetic nitrite [10,[13][14][15][16].…”

“…Terns et al [21] also found that increasing the incubation time was more important for improving the properties of cured meat than increasing the amount of starter culture used (0.01% or 0.02%). However, indirectly cured meat products incubated for less than 2 hours show lower residual nitrite levels than sodium nitrite-treated controls [11,14,22]. It is possible that longer incubation times are required to produce sufficient nitrite to achieve the desired levels of cured meat color characteristics in alternatively cured products.…”