Improvement of turkey breast meat quality and cooked gel functionality using hot-boning, quarter sectioning, crust-freeze-air-chilling and cold-batter-mincing technologies.

The effect of rapid carcass chilling on breast meat quality was evaluated using commercial (COMM) and random-bred (RB) turkeys. Immediately after slaughter, 48 turkeys from COMM or RB line were randomly subjected to one of four chilling methods: 1) water-immersion chilling (WIC) of the carcasses at 0°C ice slurry, 2) WIC after temperature abuse (TA) of the carcasses at 40°C for 30 min (TA-WIC), 3) hot-boning, quarter sectioning, and crust-freeze-air-chilling (HB-(1)/4CFAC) of breast fillets at -12°C, and 4) HB-(1)/4CFAC of fillets after TA of carcasses (TA-HB-(1)/4CFAC). The TA increased carcass and fillet temperatures by ∼1.3 and ∼4.1°C, respectively, regardless of turkey line, whereas HB-(1)/4CFAC of fillets required 28 and 33% of carcass chilling time for COMM and RB, respectively. During chilling, COMM breast pH rapidly reduced from 6.04 to 5.82, resulting in a significantly lower pH than RB after chilling (P < 0.05), whereas COMM R-value sharply increased from 1.17 to 1.43, causing no difference from RB (P > 0.05). Significantly higher L* value and cooking yield (P < 0.05) were seen in the samples of TA and WIC than those of no TA and HB-(1)/4CFAC, respectively, with no difference observed between COMM and RB fillets (P > 0.05). Higher values of hardness, gumminess, and chewiness were found for RB, no TA, and HB-(1)/4CFAC gels than COMM, TA, and WIC, respectively. These results generally indicated that protein quality and textural properties of turkey fillets were improved, regardless of strains or temperature abuse, using HB-(1)/4CFAC technology.