Meat-, fish-, and poultry-based snacks

Several process technologies, such as steaming, drying, smoking, emulsification, frying, baking, and microwaving, are employed to develop products from various animal sources; the common raw materials are meat, fish, and egg. The intermediate moisture-containing products, such as sausages, jerky, and similar products, are popular among consumers because of their convenience and attractive sensory features. The issue of safety of products, and maintenance of hygienic processing conditions during processing and storage are critical factors; legal issues are also stringent. Pork, beef, sheep, buffalo, goat, chicken, turkey, quail, goose, and duck are common meat used for developing meat-based snack foods. Many fish varieties, belonging to freshwater and marine groups, are used in snacks. The ready-to-eat snack products from meat, fish, and poultry are fried pieces, jerky, bar, cutlet, sticks/steaks, ham, sausage, bacon, patty, and burger while the ready-to-prepare industrial raw materials are surimi, restructured, and comminuted meat. Fried egg (omelet and scrambled eggs) and fried bread-omelet and rolls are the common snacks in domestic kitchens, street foods, and restaurants. Egg powder is a commercially important industrial product from the egg industries. A prominent reason for the lack of other industrial egg products from eggs is possibly the low shelf life of the developed products; the other reasons are the easy availability of raw eggs and the convenient and quick method of preparation of egg-based products.