Determination of heterocyclic amines in braised sauce beef and the effects of different cooking conditions on the formation of heterocyclic amines

Abstract BACKGROUND Cooked meat is a good source of high‐quality protein. However, during long‐term cooking of meat, radical‐induced lipid and protein oxidation may lead to the formation of poisonous compounds, such as heterocyclic amines (HAs). This work investigated a testing method for HAs and it describes that cooking temperature, cooking time and repeated cooking times have influences on the overall quality of braised sauce beef and the effect of HAs formation. RESULTS The improved method has a good separation effect on nine kinds of HAs. The average recovery of HAs at two spiked levels is between 51.70% and 88.25% ( n = 6). The detection limit is 0.025–0.060 ng g –1 , and the limit of quantitation is 0.070–0.160 ng g –1 . Only harman and norharman were detected in samples. Cooking time and cooking temperature will affect the quality and HA content of samples. When the braised sauce beef soup was cooked 20 times, the HA content was the highest – as high as 21.43 ng g –1 . The more times the beef was cooked repeatedly, the higher was the HA content. Under different cooking conditions, glucose has a significant effect on the formation of β‐carboline. CONCLUSION We have established a detection method for HAs with good repeatability and accuracy. HAs were more easily formed in braised sauce beef by high temperature, long heating and repeated brine cooking. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.