Superchilling of poultry meat for improved storage stability

Superchilling, a new concept of extending shelf life of fresh food products without freezing, has been confined mainly to seafoods and scanty work has been documented on poultry meat. Hence, poultry breast fillets were aerobically packaged and stored under superchilling (-2+0.5°C) condition for its storage stability as compared to frozen (-20+1°C) fillets. During storage period of 20 days, there was significant decrease in protein and fat content of both superchilled and frozen samples with an improvement in moisture in superchilled samples. The overall pH was significantly low in superchilled fillets at the end of storage. The water holding capacity of superchilled fillet was significantly higher with lower drip loss whereas extract release volume and water activity decreased duringstorage. The thiobarbituric acid and tyrosine values in both the samples increased significantly from day 10 onwards. The superchilled meat had significantly higher total plate count and psychrophilic count throughout the study. There was significant reduction in Lightness (L*) and yellowness (b*) score as well as significant increase in the redness (Hunter a* value) score of superchilled breast fillet as compared to frozen fillets. The hardness and shear force values were significantly higher in frozen fillets than that of superchilled fillets suggesting the beneficial effect of superchilling in extending the shelf life upto 20 days under aerobic packaging conditions without adverse effect on its quality