Study of salting and post-salting stages of fresh and thawed Iberian hams

Effect of temperature on nitrite and water diffusion in pork meat

“…During the first days of salting, there was a steep concentration gradient between the meat and the brine, leading to a fast penetration of nitrite into slice A, while for the other slices it occurred at slower rates. The same behaviour was observed by other authors when salting with sodium chloride, such as Grau et al (2008) studying the salting of fresh and thawed Iberian hams, Telis et al (2003) working on salt diffusion in farmed pantanal caiman muscle and Wang et al (2000) analysing the salting of farmed Atlantic salmon.…”

“…During the first 5 days of curing, a rapid drop in the water content was observed at the three experimental temperatures (2, 7 and 12°C), which then decreased and tended towards the equilibrium value (1.4 kg water/kg dry matter at 2°C and 0.89 and 0.75 kg water/kg dry matter at 7 and 12°C, respectively). These results are typical of meat salting and curing, where the decrease in water content is faster during the early days of the process due to osmotic dehydration (Barat et al, 2011;Grau et al, 2008). The drop in moisture content was faster during the entire curing process for the samples salted at 12 and 7°C than for those salted at 2°C.…”

Use of simultaneous brine thawing/salting in dry-cured Iberian ham production

“…One of these advances is the storage of the hams in order to obtain homogeneous batches (in weight and fat content) with sufficient quantity of the product to be processed industrially (Arnau, 1998). Another advance is the possibility of transporting the frozen hams from the farms in which they were frozen to other areas for processing (delocalization of production) and the possibility of controlling market prices or taking advantage of temporary low prices (Grau et al, 2008).…”

“…Then, thawed hams are salted in pile salt for 9 days (Grau et al, 2008). Previous studies, working with hams from White pigs (Barat et al, 2004(Barat et al, , 2005(Barat et al, , 2006aFlores et al, 2006;Ngapo et al, 1998) showed that these procedures can be changed by the simultaneous thawing/salting method.…”

Modelización de las cinéticas de difusión de nitrato de sodio y nitrito de sodio durante el curado de carne.

“…Aproximadamente a partir de los 5 días de salado el contenido de agua permanece constante, lo que evidencia que se ha alcanzado el equilibrio. Estos resultados son típicos en el proceso de salado y curado de carne, en donde se observa una rápida disminución del contenido de agua durante los primeros días del proceso Grau et al, 2008).…”