Effect of Sous-vide Time on the Quality Profiles and in Vitro Digestibility of Ready-to-eat Chicken Breast

With the increase in consumer health awareness, the development of good quality, high nutritional value of low-temperature ready-to-eat meat products has become a research hot spot in today’s meat industry. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of different cooking times (40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140 min) at 75 ℃ on the quality profiles and in vitro digestibility of chicken breast. The results showed that the moisture content, L^* and a^* values decreased significantly (P<0.05) and the cooking loss and b^* values increased significantly (P<0.05) with the increasing of sous-vide time. Meanwhile, the shear force, hardness, chewiness, springiness, cohesiveness, sensory evaluation and protein digestibility tended to increase and then decrease, and the particle size tended to decrease and then increase, all reaching the best at 75 ℃ and 120 min. Besides, compared to the chicken breast heated at 121 ℃ and 30 min, the muscle fibres of the sous-vide treatment samples were neatly arranged and orderly, dense structure, had better water holding capacity, this result could be confirmed by the scanning electron microscope results. Therefore, the present study determined the optimal cooking time for chicken breast at 75 ℃, verified the feasibility and advantages of the sous-vide technology, and provided technical support for the industrial production and quality control of low temperature ready-to-eat chicken meat products, and also provided development ideas for the standardized processing and industrialized production of traditional Chinese dishes.