Injection marination strategies for remediation of pale, exudative broiler breast meat.

Pale, soft, and exudative (PSE) breast meat is caused by a rapid postmortem pH decline while carcass temperatures are still warm. The resulting protein denaturation leads to a pale color and a decrease in water-holding capacity, causing excessive yield losses to producers. If some of this protein damage could be prevented or reversed, and water-holding capacity increased, these excessive yield losses could be avoided. Therefore, this study evaluated the use of prerigor injection of broiler breast fillets with sodium phosphates (STPP) and sodium bicarbonate to determine the effects on PSE and normal meat. A total of 200 prerigor broiler breast fillets were collected at 2 h postmortem (PM) at a commercial processing plant and were classified by L* value as pale (L* >54) or normal (L*<51). The fillets were then injected (about or less than 3 h postmortem) with 7% (wt/wt) of 0.54% NaCl + 0.42% PO4 (pH 9), 0.54% NaCl + 0.42% PO4 (pH 11), 0.30 M sodium bicarbonate (pH 12), or left as noninjected controls. The pH and L* value at 2 and 24 h postmortem, marinade uptake, water-holding capacity, and expressible moisture were evaluated. As expected, the pale fillets had lower pH and higher L* values at 2 h postmortem and lower water-holding capacity than the normal fillets. Prerigor marination with NaCl and STPP (pH 9) reduced cook loss in breast fillets. The pH 11 marinade increased 24 h pH of pale fillets compared to that of normal fillets and reduced cook loss. Sodium bicarbonate increased pH at 24 h PM of pale fillets but not to that of normal fillets. These results indicate that marinating prerigor PSE meat with the high-pH phosphate marinade used in this study can improve PSE meat quality.