Novel Technologies for Flavor Formation in the Processing of Meat Products: A Review

ABSTRACT

Flavor is considered the most important attribute that affects the acceptability of meat products by consumers. The thermal processing is a major contributor to the formation of meat flavors. Conventional cooking methods usually result in a decrease in product quality (cooking loss, discoloration, tough texture, etc.) and an inadequate release of meat flavor. However, as consumers’ desire for good flavors and high quality grows rapidly, more and more researchers are looking for emerging alternative technologies to achieve a rich flavor formation and a high nutritional value during thermal or non-thermal processing in meat products. This review discusses the principles, of flavor formation mechanisms, and applications of emerging technologies (microwave heating, ohmic heating, pulsed electric field, ultrasound and high pressure processing) currently available for thermal and non-thermal processing of meat products.

KEYWORDS:

• Thermal processing
• non-thermal processing
• meat products
• flavor formation
• nutritional value

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support from the following sources: The National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFD0400801), the 111 Project (BP0719028), Jiangsu Province (China) “Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control” Industry Development Program, Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory Project of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology (No. FMZ202003), all of them enabled us to carry out this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China [No. 2018YFD0400801].