Comparison of the quality of cooked beef products cooled by vacuum coolingand by conventional cooling

The influence of vacuum cooling on the quality of large cooked beef joints injected with brine was studied as compared with conventional cooling metho ds including ail.-blast, slow-air and water-immersion cooling. Samples were cooked in an oven at 80 degreesC until core temperatures reached 70 degree sC and then cooled to core temperatures of 4 degreesC. Mean results showed that vacuum cooling was very rapid (2.8 h) compared to water-immersion (14. 2 h), slow-air (10.3 h) and air-blast (8 h). The chill loss was higher for vacuum cooled joints while total yield was reduced to less than 100%. Howev er, sensory analysis showed that water-immersion cooled samples were more t ender. juicy and had better binding cohesion than rite other samples. Vacuu m cooled samples showed better overall colons acceptability while slow-air samples had the lowest overall acceptability. Instrumental texture results indicated a similar trend to sensory analysis with the highest Warner-Bratz ler shear force required for the vacuum cooled joints. Concentration of mal onaldehyde in samples measured by the Thiobarbituric acid method was wed as an indicator of lipid oxidation with vacuum cooled samples having highest values after 35 d storage. Average total viable counts after cooling weve l ower in vacuum cooled samples than the other samples.