Impact of Natural Additives with a Low-Sodium Salting Process on the Quality of the Salted Raya Fish (Alestes dentex)

One of the fish captured from Lake Nasser in Aswan Governorate of Egypt is the Raya fish, which is remarkably used to make Moloha (a heavy salted fish). The purpose of this study was to examine the Raya fish subjected to a salting process using low-sodium salt, either with or without the addition of natural additives, viz. turmeric, ginger, yeast, and lemon juice. The findings demonstrated that the addition of ginger or turmeric to low-sodium salt treatment (F5, F6) led to a notable increase in the wet weight content of fat (7.30% & 8.30%) and protein (17.47% & 17.30%), respectively. The salt content decreased in all treatments after being treated with low-sodium salt, according to the results, falling between 4.08% and 4.86% in comparison with treatment F1 (6.98%). The greatest significant reductions in TBARS values (1.11 & 1.04mg MDA/kg sample), TVB-N values (41.84 & 40.02mg/ 100g), and total bacterial counts (4.27 & 4.29 log CFU/g) were observed in treatments F5 & F6, respectively. Comparing treatments F5 and F6 to the others, the former displayed the highest sensory evaluation scores.