Quality improvement by vacuum treatment of boiled skipjack loins for the production of dried skipjack

ABSTRACT: This study attempted to reduce the lipid and water contents in boiled skipjack loins by vacuum treatment and the quality of vacuumed boiled meat was then evaluated during the chilled and frozen storage. The boiled meats were vacuumed at a pressure of 400 Pa for 30 min using a vacuum freeze dryer as an experimental convenience in order to degrease, cool and dehydrate rapidly. The vacuumed boiled meats were stored at 0.0 ± 0.2°C for 10 days and at −20 ± 0.5°C for 90 days. The unvacuumed boiled meats were cooled by air-cooling and stored as the control. Lipid content on a wet basis (w.b.) was reduced as much as 0.5% in the ventral part and 0.4% in the dorsal part of the boiled meats after vacuum treatment. Water content (w.b.) was reduced as much as 2.5% in the ventral part and 3.0% in the dorsal part. The thiobarbituric acid and volatile basic nitrogen values in vacuumed boiled meats were significantly lower ( P < 0.05) than that in unvacuumed boiled meats during storage. Inosine monophosphate (IMP) was only detected as a major nucleotide (about 70%) in boiled meats, and the decomposition of IMP in vacuumed boiled meats was smaller than that in unvacuumed boiled meats during storage. It was concluded that the quality of boiled skipjack loins could be improved by vacuum treatment as a preprocessing procedure in the production of dried skipjack such as katsuobushi .