Biochemical and Quality Changes Occurring During Freezing of Poultry Meat

Abstract

SUMMARY— Comparative studies on muscle from fresh (unfrozen) and freshly frozen chickens showed that freezing caused small, but detectable changes in eating quality and that changes in muscle proteins during freezing depended on freezing rate. Slow freezing caused a larger loss of drip on thawing, a larger loss of nitrogenous constituents and nucleic acid derivatives to the drip, and a larger loss of water‐holding capacity of meat, than fast freezing. In addition, slow freezing, as compared to fast freezing, increased proteolysis and caused a greater decrease in the adenosine‐triphosphatase activity of myofibrillar proteins. Taste panel comparisons of fresh and frozen chicken meat showed that freezing caused a significant change in the odor of uncooked breast and leg meat and a decrease in tenderness of cooked breast meat. The results suggest that rapid freezing preserves the integrity of muscle proteins to a greater extent than slow freezing.

Effect of frozen storage on protein denaturation in bovine muscle 1. Myofibrillar ATPase activity and differential scanning calorimetric studies

“…Most of the publications deal with frozen fish muscle (Connell, 1968;Matsumoto, 1980b;Shenouda, 1980); few studies have been performed on muscle from other animal species. Ito, Sung & Fukazawa (1968) and Kang,It0 & Fukuzawa (l983), observed changes in the actin-myosin interaction during frozen storage of rabbit muscle, while Khan & Berg (1967) and Yamamoto, Samejima & Yasui (1977) found changes in both the structure and ATPase activity of myofibrillar proteins of chicken muscle during frozen storage.…”

The effect of freezing and thawing on the magnetic resonance imaging parameters of water in beef, lamb and pork meat

“…The denaturation of myosin and protein aggregation has also been demonstrated in fish during freezing and frozen storage ( Fennema et al ., 1973 ; Matsumuto, 1980; Shenouda, 1980). The amount of protons in the macromolecular pool is also probably affected by the loss of soluble sarcoplasmic proteins contained in the drip when the meat is frozen ( Khan & Berg, 1967; Awad et al ., 1969 ; Penny, 1977). In light of the above, the increase in MT rate in frozen–thawed meat is probably due to a combination of protein denaturation followed by protein aggregation and drip loss.…”

Heat Transfer, Organoleptic Quality Changes and Moisture Exchange in Air‐blast Chilled Poultry Carcasses

“…STUDIES done on cooling of carcasses in an air blast were for the purpose of completely freezing the bird. Complete freezing resulted in significant loss in eating quality of the bird (Khan and Van den Berg, 1967) and bones of fryers were darkened by freezing and thawing (Brant and Stewart, 1950).…”