Effects of cooking oils and packaging media on quality of meat floss

Abstract

Meat floss (MF) is one of the popular ready-to-eat meat products among the elites of northern Nigeria, which is fast extending to some other parts of the country because of its long shelflife at room temperature. Nonetheless, there is little documentation on the keeping quality during storage when MF is prepared from different cooking oil and packaged in different materials. In this study, meat floss was produced from raw beef (3kg) by cooking, cooling, shredding and deep frying. The deep frying was done in three cooking oils (groundnut oil - GO, soya oil - SO and palm oil - PO) and the products were packed in three materials (acrylic bottle - P₁, polyethylene - P₂ and polyamide - P₃ ). The frying was done using 1 litre each oil to 500 g of shredded meat, continued until golden brown colour was reached at about 20 minutes. The iodine number of each of the three oil types, and the crude protein and moisture contents of the raw meat and freshly prepared meat floss were determined. At 7, 14 and 21 days of storage the meat floss types were assessed for microbial growth and Thiobarbituric Acid Reactive Substances (TBARS). The study was a 3 x 3 factorial experiment fitted into completely randomized design replicated three times. The GO had highest iodine number (38.83) and PO had the least (28.00). The protein content of MF (43.93%) was higher than that of raw meat (21.79%). The MFSO was richest in crude protein (44.54%) but MFPO had highest moisture content (14.33%). The microbial load (1.49 log10^-2cfu/cm²) and TBARS (0.82mg MDA/kg) of fresh MFSO was highest. The microbial load decreased with storage, with highest values obtained in MFSO on 0, 7 and 14 days. However on day 21, the three MF types had similar lowest microbial load. The polyamide pack had the highest microbial load throughout the storage period. Conversely, the TBARS of MF prepared from the three oils and stored in the three materials increased with storage for 21 days, with highest values obtained in MFSO and in polyamide. Nonetheless, all values obtained for microbial load and TBARS during storage did not exceed the threshold values for spoilage of stored meat products. It can be inferred from the study that though meat floss produced from palm oil and packed in acrylic bottle stored best, any of the three oils and any of the three packaging media retained the keeping quality of beef meat floss for 21 days at room temperature.

Keywords: Cooking oils, lipid oxidation, meat floss, microbial growth, packaging media