Accelerated mild heating of dry-cured ham by applying power ultrasound in a liquid medium

Recent advancements in the utilization of ultrasonic technology for the curing of processed meat products: A comprehensive review

Curation meat products involves multiple stages, including pre-curing processing (thawing, cleaning, and cutting), curing itself, and post-curing processing (freezing, and packaging). Ultrasound are nonthermal processing technology widely used in food industry. This technology is preferred because it reduces the damages caused by traditional processing techniques on food, while simultaneously improving the nutritional properties and processing characteristics of food. The utilization of ultrasonic-assisted curing technology has attracted significant attention within the realm of meat product curing, encouraging extensive research efforts. In terms of curing meat products, ultrasonic-assisted curing technology has been widely studied due to its advantages of accelerating the curing speed, reducing nutrient loss, and improving the tenderness of cured meats. Therefore, this article aims to comprehensively review the application and mechanism of ultrasound technology in various stages of meat product curing. Furthermore, it also elaborates the effects of ultrasonic-assisted curing on the tenderness, water retention, and flavor substances of the meat products during the curing process. Besides, the implication of the ultrasound in the processing of meat curation plays a potent role together with other technologies or methods. The use of ultrasound technology in the process of meat curation was analyzed, which might be a theoretical insight for the industrialization prospects of the meat product.

Novel NaCl reduction technologies for dry-cured meat products and their mechanisms: A comprehensive review

Sodium chloride (NaCl) confers a unique flavor and quality in meat products, however, due to growing concerns about the adverse effects of excessive NaCl consumption, how to reduce NaCl content while ensuring quality and safety has become a research hotspot in this field. This review mainly discusses the role of NaCl in dry-cured meat, as well as novel salt-reducing substances that can substitute for the effects of NaCl to achieve sodium reduction objectives. New technologies, such as vacuum curing, ultrahigh pressure curing, ultrasonic curing, pulsed electric field curing, and gamma irradiation, to facilitate the development of low-sodium products are also introduced. The majority of current salt reduction technologies function to enhance salt diffusion and decrease curing time, resulting in a decrease in NaCl content. Notably, future studies should focus on implementing multiple strategies to compensate for the deficiencies in flavor and safety caused by NaCl reduction.

Insights into ultrasonic treatment on the mechanism of proteolysis and taste improvement of defective dry-cured ham

To investigate the effects of ultrasonic treatment on proteolysis and taste development of defective dry-cured ham, sensory attributes, enzyme activities, protein degradation and free amino acids were evaluated after different ultrasonic treatments. The ultrasonic treatment of 1000 W & 50 °C significantly increased the intensities of overall taste, umami, sweetness and richness, and decreased bitterness values compared with other groups. The residual activities of DPP I and cathepsin B + L in 1000 W & 50 °C maintained 48.71% and 24.94% of control group, respectively; the intense degradation of structural proteins was observed by label-free proteomics, accordingly. The contents of total free amino acids from 4522.64 mg/100 g muscles in control group increased to 5838.75 mg/100 g muscles in 1000 W & 50 °C; the largest increase of sweet and umami amino acids observed in 1000 W & 50 °C was responsible for the improvement of taste quality of defective dry-cured ham.

Airborne ultrasonic application on hot air-drying of pork liver. Intensification of moisture transport and impact on protein solubility

Nowadays, there is increasing interest in developing strategies for the efficient and sustainable use of animal by-products, such as pork liver. In order to stabilize the product, a prior dehydration stage may be required due to its high perishability. The water removal process of pork liver is energy costly and time consuming, which justifies its intensification using novel technologies. In this sense, the aim of this study was to assess the effect of the airborne application of power ultrasound on the hot air-drying of pork liver. For that purpose, drying experiments were carried out at 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 °C on pork liver cylinders at 2 m·s^-1 with (US) and without ultrasonic application (AIR). The drying process was modeled from the diffusion theory and, in the dried pork liver, the protein solubility was analyzed in order to determine the effect of drying on the protein quality. The ultrasound application increased the drying rate, shortening the drying time by up to 40% at 30 °C. The effect of power ultrasound at high temperatures (60 and 70 °C) was of lesser magnitude. Drying at 70 °C involved a noticeable reduction in the protein solubility for dried liver, while the impact of ultrasound application on the solubility was not significant (p > 0.05).

A comprehensive review on molecular mechanism of defective dry-cured ham with excessive pastiness, adhesiveness, and bitterness by proteomics insights

Excessive bitterness, pastiness, and adhesiveness are the main organoleptic and textural defects of dry-cured ham, which often cause a lot of financial losses to manufacturers and seriously damage the quality of the product. These sensory and textural defects are related to the protein degradation of dry-cured ham. Proteomics shows great potential to improve our understanding of the molecular mechanism of sensory and textural defects and identify biomarkers for monitoring their quality traits. This review presents some of the major achievements and considerations in organoleptic and textural defects of dry-cured ham by proteomics analysis in the recent decades and gives an overview about how to correct sensory and textural defects of dry-cured ham. Proteomics reveals that muscle proteins derived from myofibril and cytoskeleton and involved in metabolic enzymes and oxygen transport have been identified as potential biomarkers in defective dry-cured ham. Relatively high residual activities of cathepsin B and L are responsible for the excessive degradation of these protein biomarkers in defective dry-cured ham. Ultrasound-assisted mild thermal or high-pressure treatment shows a good correction for the organoleptic and textural defects of dry-cured ham by changing microstructure and conformation of muscle proteins by accelerating degradation of proteins and polypeptides into free amino acids.

Analysis of ultrasound-assisted convective heating/cooling process: Development and application of a Nusselt equation

In this study, the convective heating/cooling process assisted by US irradiation is analyzed with the aims of developing a new convective heat transfer correlation. Heat transfer experiments were conducted with different copper machined geometries (cube, sphere and cylinder), fluid velocities (0.93-5.00 × 10^-3 m/s), temperatures (5-60 °C), and US intensities (0-6913 W/m²) using water as heat transfer fluid. The Nusselt (Nu) equation was obtained by assuming an apparent Nu number in the US-assisted process, expressed as the sum of contributions of the forced convection and cavitation-acoustic streaming effects. The Nu equation was validated with two sets of experiments conducted with a mixture of ethylene glycol and water (1:1 V/V) or a CaCl₂ aqueous solution (30 g/L) as immersion media, achieving a satisfactory reproduction of experimental data, with mean relative deviations of 17.6 and 17.8%, respectively. In addition, a conduction model with source term and the proposed correlation were applied to the analysis of US-accelerated heating kinetics of dry-cured ham reported in literature. Results demonstrated that US improves heating of ham slices because of the increased heat transfer coefficients and the direct absorption of US power by the foodstuff.

Modelling inactivation of Staphylococcus spp. on sliced Brazilian dry-cured loin with thermosonication and peracetic acid combined treatment

Ultrasound (US) has a high capacity to increase food safety. Although high and/or moderate temperature in combination with US has been studied, the knowledge about cooling/low temperatures as well as its combined effect with chemical preservation methods is scarce. Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe the inactivation of Staphylococcus spp. (SA) present in the natural microbiota of sliced Brazilian dry-cured loin (Socol, BDL) using US (40 kHz and 5.40 W/g) at 1.6-17.9 kJ/g, temperature (T) between 6.4 and 73.6 °C and peracetic acid (PA) between 5.5 and 274.5 mg/L employing the Central Composite Rotatable Design. The model fully describes how the combination of US, T, and PA affects SA inactivation. In BDL, an increase in US acoustic energy density (kJ/g) allows the reduction of T necessary to inactivate SA because of the occurrence of synergistic effect. However, US applied at low T was inefficient. On the other hand, PA was more efficient at low T, since high T degraded this compound at different rates according to the holding T. Therefore, the data indicates a relation between the technologies used in the combined decontamination of sliced BDL improving dry-cured meat safety.