Textura de músculos de cerdo y de jamón curado con distintos niveles de NaCl, pH y contenido de agua

by Ruiz Ramírez, Jorge Luis

The aim of the present Doctoral Thesis was to determine the relationship between the composition parameters: water activity (aw), water content (X), NaCl content, pH level and relationship non-protein nitrogen/total nitrogen with the parameters of instrumental texture in dry-cured muscles of pork and dry-cured hams. Four experiments were carried out. The experiment 1 had as objective to describe the relationship between texture parameters (hardness, chewiness, cohesiveness and springiness) of dry-cured ham and its X and aw. For this experiment, samples from the muscle biceps femoris at different drying levels were used. The experiment 2 had as objective to describe the profiles of aw, X and texture in crusted dry-cured loin versus non-crusted dry-cured loin. It also looked at the relationship of these parameters in another muscle of different anatomical situation, in this case the muscle longissimus dorsi. The experiments 3 and 4 had as objective to determine the effect of the NaCl content, pH level and non-protein nitrogen on the relationship between X and the hardness, cohesiveness and springiness in dry-cured muscles after curing for 45 days (experiment 3) and in dry-cured ham aged for 289 days (experiment 4). The relationship between X and aw with hardness in dry-cured ham and in dry-cured loin was non linear. Hardness increases when X and/or aw decreases. However, for X values under 0.6 kg water/kg dry matter and aw values under 0.7, the hardness of dry-cured ham increased dramatically. This large increase would explain the crust formation on the lean surface of the ham. This substantial increment of the hardness occurred approximately to equal X value in muscle biceps femoris and semimembranosus of dry-cured muscle curing for 45 days but was different to that observed in dry-cured loin. The relationship between X and aw with cohesiveness and springiness was linear. The cohesiveness and springiness of dry-cured ham and dry-cured loin diminished when X and/or aw diminished. There was no effect of the type of muscle (semimembranosus vs biceps femoris) on texture parameters in dry-cured muscles. In dry-cured ham the semimembranosus muscle presented higher hardness than the biceps femoris. The cohesiveness tended to be higher in muscle biceps femoris than semimembranosus muscle to X<0.7. The NaCl content affected significantly (P < 0.05) the relationship between X and hardness. The dry-cured muscle with higher NaCl content presented higher hardness, when the pHSM24 < 5.7 but not when the pHSM24 > 6.2. On the other hand, in dry-cured ham there was no direct effect of the NaCl content on the relationship between X and texture parameters, but there was an effect on the proteolysis index. The dry-cured hams with higher proteolysis index presented smaller hardness, higher cohesiveness and springiness than those dry-cured hams with lower proteolysis index. On line methods to determine the X value at the surface of dry-cured ham and dry-cured loin could be useful for monitoring parameters of drying (temperature, relative humidity and air velocity) and therefore for maintaining the X value at the surface above the critical value of approximately 0.6 for dry-cured ham and of 0.8 for dry-cured loin. This control on the X value could avoid crusting and therefore improve the drying quality.