Sensitivity of HPP product eating quality to meat quality & process attributes

Summary

​MLA introduced to the Australian red meat industry High Pressure Processing (HPP) in November 2009 at a workshop hosted by CSIRO to showcase the technology and value adding red meat opportunities – namely to increase shelf life and addition of another level of food safety and potential for less reliance on preservatives degradation of vitamins and flavour reduced to a minimum.  As with any new technology platform, the learning curve has continued by exploring the HPP mechanisms at various time, temperature, pressure settings and muscle profiling and biophysical assessments (texture, cook loss, colour). 
The overall objective of this project was to compare the impact of HPP at low and high temperature to other interventions and cook methods – in particular, evaluation of tenderisation (texture), colour and yield for control and aged samples for several beef cuts. 
The research found optimum HPP conditions for improvement in texture (using both assessments by a chef and Warner-Bratzler shear force) and moisture loss yield of beef topside, brisket and chuck pieces were 600 MPa at 90°C for 15 min.  
It was found that there was no effect of pressure (425 MPa, 5 min) applied at 70°C on the texture of either brisket or chuck muscle.  However, when pressure (600 MPa, 15 min) was applied at 90°C, there was a definite muscle difference: (a) chuck meat pieces were tenderised; (b) tenderisation occurred in brisket muscle only after ageing and with no further cooking prior to texture assessment.  The lowest moisture losses occurred when muscle samples were not further cooked after high pressure treatment.
These results indicate the high temperature HPP may provide a pathway for meat tenderisation and improved yield to add value to beef secondary cuts – this could include potential Meat Standards Australia (MSA) pathway.  Further HPP as a technology platform may enable provisions for enterprises to “cook” raw meat packaged and HPP treated similar to Sous Vide technology but in 15 minutes compared to 6 hours to achieve similar eating quality but with improved yields.