Changes in nutritive quality of pork meat osmotic dehidration in sugar beet molasses and aqueous solution of sodium chloride, sucrose and sugar beet molasses

Abstract

Osmotic dehydration is a water removal process involving soaking food in a hypertonic solution. Process of osmotic dehydration is typically used as a pre-treatment for many processes in order to improve the sensory and functional properties of food, without a significant decrease in nutritive values of the product. This paper analyzes the effects of different hypertonic solutions, after the process of osmotic dehydration of pork meat under atmospheric pressure at room temperature of 22oC, to determine the nutritive quality of the final product. As osmotic agents sugar beet molasses and aqueous solution of sodium chloride and sucrose and sugar beet molasses in the ratio 1:1, were used. The ratio of raw material and hypertonic solution was 1:5, and immersion time was set to 5 hours. Fundamental chemical composition was determined by SRPS ISO methods, and mineral content was determined using AAS method. The results indicate that during the process of dehydration significant changes occur in water loss and growth dry matter content. The initial dry matter content of meat was 26.21% and after the immersion in molasses increases to 68.52%, while in aqueous solution of sodium chloride and sucrose and sugar beet molasses in the ratio 1:1 increases to 63.70%. Also, after the process of dehydration meat was enriched in some minerals Na, K, Ca and Fe, while the content of Mg was slightly reduced. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the applied solutions significantly improve quality of semiproducts and that osmotic dehydration represent a suitable pre-treatment for meat drying. Water loss was slightly higher when sugar beet molasses was used as osmotic agent. Using sugar beet molasses as an alternative medium for the process of osmotic dehydration opens new opportunities for innovation in dehydrated products.