Storage studies of restructured breaded chicken steaks

E. C. Chuah, Q. L. Yeoh and J. Mohd. Yunus

Abstract

Restructured breaded chicken steaks with reduced fat and salt as well as with and without added antioxidant were produced from spent hen meat. The moulded and tempered meat logs were subjected to a pressure of 1 000 psi prior to slicing into steaks. Shelf life studies showed that the products, when vacuum packed in aluminium laminate bags comprising an outer layer of polyester, a middle layer of aluminium and an inner sealant layer of cast polypropylene were still acceptable after 12 months of storage at –20 °C. The fat content was quite low at 8.9%. During storage, the thiobarbituric acid values ranged from 0.5 to 2.6 mg malonaldehyde/kg in the sample with added antioxidant and 0.8 to 3.3 mg malonaldehyde/kg for the samples without added antioxidant. The microbiological counts were quite low, with the total viable count being 1.7 x 104 and 4.8 x 104 cfu/g in the samples with and without antioxidant respectively after 12 months of storage at –20 °C. No Staphylococcus or Salmonella were detected in all samples while the coliform and Escherichia coli counts were very low

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