The effect of pressure and phosphates on yield, shear, and color of marinated broiler breast meat

Summary A significant portion of raw poultry meat in the U.S. is marinated prior to consumption, usually with a mixture of water, salt, and phosphates that are vacuum tumbled with the meat. This study was designed to determine whether pressure, phosphate, or both were responsible for the increase in marinated weight and retention during cooking after marination. In each of three replicate trials, 60 broiler breast fillets were assigned to tumbler vessels with pressures equivalent to either vacuum (381 mm Hg below ambient, VT), ambient (AT), or positive (PT, 776 mm Hg above ambient), with or without phosphate in the marination solution (added at 15% by weight to raw meat weight - either 91% water, 6% salt, and 3% phosphate or 94% water and 6% salt, respectively) in a 3X2 design. All tumblers were operated at 15 RPM for 20 min at a temperature of 3 0 C. Raw fillets were weighed, colour measured via colorimeter, marinated, stored 1 h, reweighed, cooked, reweighed, colour re-measured, held overnight, and two strips per fillet sheared via the Warner-Bratzler method (WBSHR). Phosphate had no significant (P<0.05) effect on % marinade uptake; the type of pressure application was significant, however, as AT (12.8%) samples picked up more marinade than PT (11.4%), but neither was different from VT (12.0%). There was no effect of pressure or phosphate on % drip loss (mean = –1.06%). For cook yield, there was no effect due to pressure treatment; phosphate, however, significantly increased yield (86.1 vs. 76.6%). For WBSHR, kg force to shear for VT (9.2) was higher than either PT (5.6) or AT (5.5) for the phosphate treatment, but shear force for PT (9.3) was higher than VT (6.0) or AT (6.2) for the non-phosphate treatment. There were no differences in raw colour due to pressure or phosphate treatments, but phosphate increased cooked L* from 70.6 to 71.6, and decreased cooked a* from 1.57 to 0.95 (no practical significance). Overall, the type of pressure application during tumbling has no effect on % drip loss, cook yield, or colour values, and only minor effect on % marinade uptake, and the major effect obtained with phosphate is increase in yield. Based on these data, processors may improve yield with phosphate in marination where allowed, but vacuum pressure during tumbling provides no advantage compared to ambient or positive pressure.