Experimental study on vacuum sublimation-rehydration thawing of batch chicken breast: effect of different tiny-pore-in-frozen-food formation conditions

Vacuum sublimation-rehydration thawing (VSRT) is affected by tiny-pore-in-frozen-food formation condition (T-FC), which includes sublimation dehydration ratio (SDR) and heating plate temperature (HPT). To optimize the batch thawing process from the perspective of T-FC, the chicken breast was taken as research object to investigate the influence of T-FC on thawing efficiency, batch thawing uniformity, thawing effect and total specific energy consumption (SEC). The results indicated that moderately increasing SDR could promote the formation of numerous uniform tiny pores in samples, while moderately increasing HPT could accelerate ice crystal sublimation and enhance heat and mass transfer. The optimal T-FC was identified as SDR of 3% combined with HPT of 40 °C. Under this T-FC, the highest batch thawing uniformity (temperature coefficient of variation was 2.53×10 -2 ), the shortest thawing time (90.92 min), the best thawing effect and lower total SEC (1.548 MJ/kg) were obtained. Compared with vacuum steam thawing and air thawing, VSRT demonstrated notable advantages, shortening thawing time by 63.46% and 34.47%, respectively, while also achieving the best batch thawing uniformity, the optimal thawing effect and improved energy efficiency. The findings of this study could serve as guidance for the application of VSRT in the batch thawing of frozen food. • A novel vacuum sublimation-rehydration thawing is applied in batch chicken breasts. • 3% sublimation dehydration ratio with 40°C heating plate temperature is the optimal. • Tiny pores promote condensation heat exchange for rapid, uniform batch thawing. • Thawing time is 34.47% shorter than that of vacuum steam thawing. • Thawed chicken breast has good quality and energy consumption is relatively lower.