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Effects of phosphate, water, fat and salt on qualities of low-fat emulsified meatball

2017-04-05

Abstract

A four-factor central composite design was adopted for studying the effects of phosphates, water, fat and salt on qualities of a low-fat emulsified meatball (Chinese meatball). Results indicated that cooking loss was significantly affected by interactions of phosphate with salt. Minimum cooking loss appeared at 2.5% salt addition level in the tested range. Product lipid content was significantly affected by interactions of phosphate with fat, salt with fat and water with fat. Minimum lipid content appeared at phosphate addition level of 0.25%, at salt addition level of 2.4% and at water addition level of 20% in the respective tested ranges. Hunter-b-value of products was significantly affected by interactions of phosphate with salt and minimum Hunter-b-value appeared at a phosphate addition level, which varied with salt addition levels. The texture of product was significantly affected by interactions of phosphates with salt and maximum texture score appeared at 2.4% salt addition level and 0.5% phosphate addition level. Treatment combinations with less water, more fat, more salt and more phosphate additions yielded better preference and better acceptance products. Additions of greater than 2.2% salt and less than 22% water can produce acceptable low-fat meatballs. Further investigations are needed to reveal the complicate interaction effects of phosphate, water, fat and salt.

Introduction

Emulsified meatball or Chinese meatball, called ‘Kung-wan’ in Taiwanese, is a very popular meat product in Taiwan and related Chinese communities. It is different from western style meatballs in its processing methods and product properties. Western meatballs usually are made of different kinds of minced meat such as pork, beef, etc. Its texture is soft because binding between ingredients is loose. Chinese meatballs are normally made by grinding hog muscle tissues, fat and salt with a cutter, meat pounder or stone grinder. Therefore, it is an emulsified meat product and its texture is much tougher. Some research works have been done on Chinese meatball. These include: different pork raw materials (Chen, 1979), emulsifiers (Chen & Tseng, 1980), polyphosphates (Chen & Guo, 1985), raw material compositions (Su, Lee, Chi & Lin, 1988), cutter knives (Chen & Chen, 1990), storage conditions of pork raw material (Liu & Chen, 1992a), storage conditions of Kung-wan product (Liu, Chen & Lin, 1992) and effects of cellulose addition (Liu & Chen, 1992b). In a previous report (Hsu & Chung, 1998), we studied total effects and cross-factor interactions of major processing factors, including salt, fat, sugar and cooking temperature on qualities of Kung-wan products.

Although Kung-wan is very popular. It is becoming a health concern for consumers because of its high lipid content of greater than 30% of its total weight. Therefore, as part of a series of studies in developing low-fat Kung-wans, water is used to replace some fat ingredient in this study and phosphates were adopted to improve qualities of the low-fat products. The aim of this study is to investigate the total effects and cross-factor interaction effects of water, phosphates, salt and fat on cooking loss, proximate compositions, texture, color and sensory qualities of the low-fat Kung-wan products.