Effects of Ultrasound Pretreatment and Ageing Processing on Quality and Tenderness of Pork Loin

Abstract

Tenderness is a primary indicator of meat quality, which directly influences consumer acceptance of the meat. Ultrasound can effectively increase the tenderness of red meat, such as pork and beef, by breaking up muscle fibers and connective tissues through mechanical force, thus making it a basis for physical tenderization of meat to improve meat quality. In this study, ultrasound (2200 W, 15 kHz) was applied in the processing of pork loin to explore the influences of varying treatment durations (0-6 minutes) and posttreatment aging durations (0-2 days) on the tenderness, texture profile, physical and chemical qualities (myofibrillar fragmentation index, or MFI, and rate of marinade absorption), and sensory evaluation (9-point hedonic scale) of meat. The results indicated that ultrasonic treatment (2200 W) for 6 minutes can effectively tenderize the meat by increasing the MFI to 15.1%, lowering the hardness in texture profile analysis (TPA) to 87.6%, and reducing shear force to 87.9%. Moreover, if pork loin is allowed to age for 48 hours following 6 minutes of ultrasonic treatment, shear force can be further reduced to 72.3%. The sensory evaluation scores for texture, tenderness, and overall acceptance of pork loin increased with the elongated ultrasonic treatment.

Effects of ultrasound‐assisted frying on the physiochemical properties and microstructure of fried meatballs

“…As for fresh meat, ultrasonic treatment with a frequency of 25 kHz and an intensity of 2 W cm −2 was applied in semimembranosus muscles resulting in tender meat during aging (Dickens et al ., ). Ultrasound (2200 W, 15 kHz) could effectively tenderize the pork loin and decrease shear force by 72.3% after 48 h aging (Yeung & Huang, ). It was reported that beef M. semitendinosus treated by ultrasound of 20 kHz could significantly increase myofibrillar fragmentation index (MFI) and decrease Warner‐Bratzler shear force (WBSF) (Wang et al ., ).…”

Use of ultrasound as a pre-treatment for vacuum cooling process of cooked broiler breasts

“…Also, 15 min of US37 pre-treatment had no negative effects on hardness compared to control samples (p > 0.05). In a study by Yeung and Huang [41] , the hardness of ultrasound pre-treated pork loins determined by texture profile analysis was reported to decrease while overall acceptance scores of pork loins increased.

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Techniques for postmortem tenderisation in meat processing: effectiveness, application and possible mechanisms

“…Therefore, more advanced techniques are used to combine ageing or other interventions to make the best use of the combined tenderising effects. For instance, ultrasound-assisted ageing can increase muscle pH (neutral pH) to induce higher calpain activity and intervene the early glycolysis of ageing by damaging the cell structures and changing protein conformation (Got et al 1999;Yeung & Huang 2017). Moreover, the μ-calpain in neutral pH muscle displays sufficient proteolytic activity to degrade MP and regulate some structural proteins during the ageing for acceptable tenderness (Kim et al 2008;.…”