Potential of Pulsed Electric Fields for the preparation of Spanish dry-cured sausages

Abstract

The aim of this investigation was to lay the groundwork of the potential application of Pulsed Electric Fields (PEF) technology for accelerating the drying process of meat and meat products, and specifically in this work of Spanish dry-cured sausages “longaniza”. PEF treatments were applied to pork loin samples, and the influence of different PEF parameters on the process were evaluated. An optimal PEF treatment of 1 kV/cm, 200 μs of pulse width and 28 kJ/kg was determined as the most suitable to electroporate meat cells and to improve water transfer by achieving a water content reduction of 60.4% in treated-meat samples dried at 4 °C. The influence of PEF on meat drying rate was also studied on minced pork and the results showed that with a particle size of 4.0 mm higher drying rates were achieved. To validate the results, Spanish cured sausages were prepared from treated and untreated minced pork and stuffed into gauzes and natural pork casings at pilot plant scale. After the curing process, the application of PEF to sausages stuffed into gauze reduced the drying time from 17 to 9–10 days, a reduction of 41–47%, confirming the effects described at lab scale and the potential of PEF for accelerating the sausage-drying process.

Effects of PEF-Assisted Freeze-Drying on Protein Quality, Microstructure, and Digestibility in Chilean Abalone “Loco” (Concholepas concholepas) Mollusk

“…Although PEF processing has been used as a pretreatment in the dried food industry for diverse vegetables ( 20 , 32 – 35 ). Nevertheless, there are few previous works on the effect of PEF as a pretreatment for the drying process in matrices of animal origin; however, an investigation carried out by Astráin-Redín et al ( 20 ) reported a reduction in the curing time of Spanish sausage between 19 and 33% when applying PEF as a pretreatment.…”

“…The thermophysical properties so far published have served to increase the database as well as to allow and test the mathematical models that depend on the composition, temperature, pressure, orientation of the fiber, etc. ( 20 ). As for the food microstructure, its evaluation depends on the processing method, the operating variables, and the microstructure of the food produced during the process ( 21 ).…”

Meat consumption: theory, practice and future prospects

“…As already known, in pulsed electric field technology, high-intensity electric fields (> 0.1 kV/cm) are applied to the meat between two electrodes for a very short time (in the range of milliseconds to microseconds) [49]. The most important phenomenon associated with PEF is the occurrence of electroporation, which increases the juiciness of the meat [50].…”

“…The most important phenomenon associated with PEF is the occurrence of electroporation, which increases the juiciness of the meat [50]. Another advantage is the minimal effect on the microstructure of the meat [50], while shortcomings include the strong dependence on intrinsic factors of the treated food/meat which may reduce its effectiveness [49].…”

Modeling the gene delivery process of the needle array-based tissue nanotransfection

“…These reports found that when an electric field is applied on cells, the thermal fluctuation introduced hydrophobic pores that can evolve into larger hydrophilic pores on the cell membrane by rearranging polar molecules in the phospholipid bilayer to minimize free energy. These electroporated pores allow the ions and molecules to be transported into or out of the cells, enabling medical applications such as DNA electrotransfer [20], electrochemotherapy [21], drug delivery [22], therapeutic healing [1,14,[17][18][19], DNA vaccination [23,24], sampling target cells for monitoring [25][26][27], industrial applications in food processing [28,29], and cell inactivation [30]. Moreover, electroporation method exhibits a simple and efficient way compared with other membrane-disruption based methods such as mechanical methods by physically puncturing [31] or deformation in microfluidic channel [32], and thermal heating by laser [33] as well as nanocarrier-based delivery through biological endocytosis and fusion [34,35].…”