An improved method of immersion vacuum cooling for small cooked pork: Bubbling Vacuum Cooling

Abstract

Summary In this paper, bubbling vacuum cooling (BVC) was compared with immersion vacuum cooling (IVC) in cooling time, weight loss, colour, texture profile, and uniformity of water temperature around the cooked meat. Results showed that the total cooling time of BVC (16.58 min) from 72 to 4 °C was shorter than that of IVC (19.12 min), while a significantly positive effect was observed in reducing cooling time for BVC at the lower temperature range (under 25 °C). For the cooling time from 10 to 4 °C, BVC (4.65 min) was significant (P < 0.05) less than that of IVC (6.47 min). Furthermore, water temperature of BVC can reach lower and distribute more uniformity than that of IVC. However, there was no significant difference (P > 0.05) in weight loss, colour and textural profile of cooled meat between these two cooling methods.

Effects of Different Salt Ion Concentrations in Immersion Vacuum Cooling on the Qualities of Spiced Chicken Drumsticks

“…When the salt ion concentration was greater than 5%, more small pores appeared in the fibers and tissues of the drumsticks, which indicate that more water could permeate the drumsticks, causing lower hardness. Thus, in the process of IVC, the increase in free water is the primary cause for the changes in hardness [ 19 , 20 ].…”

“…As salt concentration increased from 0% to 5%, the peak ratio of P 22 in meat increased and the peak ratio of P 21 decreased. IVC has been reported to enable the immersion of water in the late cooling and meat water exchange [ 19 ]. Therefore, we speculated that the effect of salt concentration on water proportion might be due to the combined effect of osmotic pressure of salt solution in the cooling process and pressure difference at the later stage of cooling, such that more bound water in meat was converted to free water.…”

“…To address this issue, several modified methods have been explored to improve IVC, such as IVC combined with other cooling methods, immersion vacuum cooling with agitation, pressure control, and immersion solutions with different initial temperatures [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Guo et al illustrated that bubbling IVC could accelerate the cooling of cooked meat, reduce weight loss and had no significant difference in moisture content, color and TPA compared with conventional IVC [ 19 ]. Liao et al found that IVC with ultrasonic assistance (IVCUA) clearly reduced the cooling time compared to IVC, and there were no significant differences in mass loss, color and texture profile among all samples.…”

Experimental investigation of the characteristic of vacuum spray cooling for tofu

“…The process of immersion vacuum cooling has been improved to reduce the cooling time by employing appropriate pressure drop rates and increasing stirring (Feng et al, 2013;Feng et al, 2014). In addition, bubble vacuum cooling (Guo et al, 2018;Song et al, 2018), pulse vacuum cooling (Cheng and Sun, 2006), ultrasonic-assisted immersion vacuum cooling (Liao and Yu, 2020) and combined cooling (Cheng and Sun, 2010) are also introduced to improve the cooling rate. However, the cooling time in immersion vacuum cooling cannot be effectively shortened by improving the process.…”