Gel properties of surimi-like materials from cardiac and skeletal muscle of pigs

Abstract

To investigate the gel properties of surimi-like materials (SLM) made from pig heart (PH), psoas major muscle (PM) and semimembranosus muscle (SM) of pigs, the three muscles were diced, chopped and washed with 25 mM sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.0) to extract myofibrillar protein. SLM from SM had significantly (p < 0.05) higher moisture content and lower crude protein content compared with PH and PM samples. The cooked SLM from PH was darker than that from PM and SM. Gel from PH had significantly (p < 0.05) lower L* and hue values, and higher b* and chroma values compared to gels from PM and SM. The cooked SLM from PH had poor water-holding capacity (WHC) resulting in higher cooking loss. SDS-PAGE showed that the bands of myosin and tropomyosin/troponin had reduced staining intensity in the PH sample, and some unidentified bands that were not in PM and SM samples were observed in PH samples.