Research On Tumbling Process And Quality Changes Of Rabbit Meat

Rabbit meat is characterized by high nutrition. China is the leading rabbit meat producer in the world. With the increasingly improvement of living standard and enhancement of health consciousness, rabbit meat has attracted the attention of contemporary consumers. Curing, which is of significant meaning in preserevation and changing meat quality, is an essential procedure in the process of many meat products. The use of wet-cured is stricted by lots of aspect because of its long-term period. Dumbling which has been wildly used in the process of many meat products can significantly affect the curing rate and improve meat qualities. Nowadays, the use of tumbling cured may lead to waste of brining solution and have low yield and uneven quality of products in our country because of lack of scientific basis. This study used the principle of the Box- Behnken test design to optimize the tumbling process of hyla rabbit meat and studied change rules of meat quality characteristics, myofibril protein functional properties and structure of rabbit meat in the process of curing. And the mechanism of the change of the rabbit meat quality characteristics was also studied in this paper. The study aims to supply some scientic theory for the industrial use of vacuum tumbling in the process of producing rabbit meat products. The main research conclusions are as follows.1. In order to optimize the vacuum tumbling process of rabbit meat, the effects of tumbling distance, marinade/meat ratio and compound phosphate/meat ratio on marinade absorption rate and final product yield were researched by the combined use of single factor experiments and response surface methodology based on Box-Behnken design. The results showed that the optimal tumbling process was obtained at tumbling distance of 351 m, marinade/meat ratio of 38%, and compound phosphate/meat ratio of 0.37%. Under these conditions, marinade absorption percentage was 31.97% and final product yield was 98.83%.2. Vacuum tumbling can affect rabbit meat quality characteristics. With increase of the tumbling distances, sensory quality improved steadily. pH, moisture content, salt content, myofibrillar fragmentation index and elastic showed increasing trend, while L~* value, a~* value, b~* value, shear stress, hardness, cohesiveness, gumminess, chewing, content of soluble protein and free amino acid content decreased gradually. Correlation analysis indicated that tumbling distance had significant correlation with all the quality indexes(p<0.05). The meat color had significant correlation with moisture content, salt content, soluble protein content and myofibrillar fragmentation index(p<0.05). Meat texture had significant correlation with moisture content and myofibril fragmentation index(p<0.05). The moisture content, salt content, myofibrillar myofibril fragmentation index and soluble protein content had significant correlation with pH value(p<0.05).3. There were six kinds of volatile flavor compounds of cured rabbit, which contained aldehydes, hydrocarbons, ketones, acids, esters and alcohols. The aldehydes had highest content, following by hydrocarbons. The kinds of alcohols, ketones, acids, esters were few with low content. With increasing tumbling distances, species of volatile flavor substances decreased 58 species of flesh meat to 44 species of samples sampled for 70 m distance. And subsequently within the range of tumbling distance from 70 m to 350 m, species of volatile flavor substances fluctuated from 41 species to 44 species. Species of aldehydes, hydrocarbons and alcohols compounds decreased, while the changes of relative content were not obvious.4. Vacuum tumbling can affect functional properties of myofibrillar protein. With increasing tumbling distances, myofibrillar protein content of rabbit meat, turbidity and gel strength decreased; while EAI, ESI and WHC of gel decreased. These changes had significant correlation with the quality characteristics of meat.5. Vacuum tumbling can affect structure of rabbit myofibrillar protein. With increasing tumbling distance, internal hydrophobic groups of myofibrillar protein gradually exposed and then gradually packed. Tumbling process led to the changes of structures of myofibrillar protein, which induced changes in the functional properties of myofibrillar protein. These changes of functional properties of myofibrillar protein consequently had great influences on the meat quality.