Osmotic dehydration of pork meat cubes - Response surface method analysis

Abstract

The main objective was to examine the influence of different osmotic parameters on the mass transfer kinetics during osmotic treatment of pork meat (M. triceps brachii). The system's response parameters observed were: water loss (WL), solid gain (SG), final dry matter content (DM) and water activity (a w). The optimum osmotic parameters seem to be: osmotic time of 4 h, molasses solution concentration of 72% and solution temperature of 45°C. These conditions were determined using Response Surface Methodology (RSM), and by superimposing the contour plots of each process variable. The predicted responses for the optimum drying conditions were: DM of 64.5%, WL in the close vicinity of 0.53, SG about 0.15 and aw in the range of 0.83 to 0.84.