Technological properties of pork in sausage production: comparison of trimmings obtained from animals of meat, meat-lard and lard breeds

Sausages are the most popular and widely manufactured meat products in Ukraine and pork is a typical raw material used for the purpose. However, there is a deficiency of pork and meat processors have to operate with all the raw meats available and often originated from the animals of different types and breeds. These are characterized by different technological properties which prevents from manufacturing sausages of the constant quality. So it is necessary to provide with the relevant information on the content and properties of different types of pork used in practice. The goal was to study physical, chemical, functional and technological properties of lean, semi-fatty and fatty trimmed pork obtained by boning and trimming half-carcasses of meat, meat-and-lard and lard breed pigs. It is determined in the course of quintuplicate experiments that trimmed meat obtained from meat breed pigs contains 13 % by weight less fatty tissue than trimmed meat from meat-and-lard pigs and 46 % by weight less than trimmed meat from lard breed pigs. It is determined that the fat tissue content in lean pork is within the range from 6.44 % to 15.08 % by weight, in semi-fatty pork – from 27.67 % to 50.96 % by weight, in fatty pork – from 58.32 % to 68.91 % by weight. The values of the criteria for assessing the functional and technological properties are determined: water to protein, fat to protein, water to fat ratios, water-binding capacity in different grades of minced trimmed meat. It is established that the optimum values of water-binding capacity with simultaneous growth of fat and water absorption are characteristic of semi-fatty pork with a fat content of 27.67 % – 34.73 % by weight, which corresponds to a fat-to-protein ratio of 2.0 – 2.5. The research fulfilled makes possible to determine the main criteria for assessing the functional and technological properties of trimmed meat, and their influence on the ability of trimmed meat of different grades to bind and retain water and fat, and to create stable meat emulsions. It facilitates the use different types and breeds of pork to guarantee the quality characteristics of the sausages being manufactured.