Abstract:
The freezing technique has been used for thousands of years for the preservation of meat. The frozen
meat has to be thawed before further processing. Quality deterioration occurs during the thawing
process. The uniform-sized broiler chicken samples were individually frozen using an ultra-low
temperature freezer (-40°C) for an overnight. The frozen meat samples were thawed in the refrigerator
(4°C), cool room (20°C), hot air oven (60°C), tap water (27±5°C), and hot water conditions (40°C) until
core temperature of the meat reaches 10°C in all method except refrigeration method where the core
allowed to reach 4°C. Moisture content (MC), water holding capacity (WHC), drip loss (DL), cooking
loss (CL), and pH were determined. There were significant differences (p<0.05) observed among the
quality parameters of the samples, including MC, DL and CL based on the different thawing methods.
However, there were no significant deviations in the pH and WHC. The sensory evaluation was also
carried to evaluate color, taste, flavor, chewiness, juiciness and overall rating of the uniformly cooked
samples by using nine hedonic scale techniques. There were no significant differences among sensory
parameters of the samples (p<0.05). Of which, the highest rating was obtained for the cool room and
tap water method, while the poor rating was for the refrigeration method. Therefore, the different
thawing methods impact on the quality parameters of the frozen broiler chicken rather than
influencing the sensory qualities. However, the cool room thawing method had minimized reductions
in the qualities of the thawed broiler chicken followed by the tap water method.
