INFLUENCE OF PROCESSING ON ADHERENCE OF A HIGHLY EXTENDED HAM TO ITS COOKING BAG

Highly extended cook-in-the-bag hams (65% brine/meat), representative of the products currently manufactured in Canada for mass distribution , were prepared using standard industrial equipment. Adherence between the cooked product and its packaging film was evaluated by measuring the force required to peel an excised band of film from the product su rface. Overall, film-product adherence did not change after two weeks of refrigerated storage and was not affected by the extent of tumbling (from 360 to 4500 total turns) or by the cooking cycle (constant temp erature of 74 degrees C, constant temperature of 84 degrees C, or step wise temperature increase, until core temperature reaches 69 degrees C ). Adherence was considerably reduced, however, when the extended musc les were finely homogenized prior to stuffing. A more detailed analysi s of the results suggested that the occasional lack of proper film-pro duct adherence observed in industry during the manufacture of highly e xtended hams cannot be due to mere deviations from the regular tumblin g or cooking cycles. In addition, results point to the necessity of se eking alternative methods to quantify adherence between meat products and their cooking bags. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights rese rved.