Estabilidade físico química e microbiológicade bacon de pernil produzido com defumação natural

Abstract

Brazil is one of the largest producers of animal protein in the world with approximately 70% of pork consumed internally in the form of industrialized products, with bacon being one of the strong points of this production. It is known that today, due to largescale production, companies prefer the use of cold smoking or liquid smoke, but industries still maintain hot or natural smoking, on which there is no wealth of data studied. This study evaluated physicochemical and microbiological parameters over a period of 0 to 90 days. The results obtained demonstrate that the moisture ranged from 44.36 to 64% among the lots. The values for lipids ranged from 14.74 to 30.80%, as they vary according to the composition of the raw material. The average pH for initial time was 6.11 and it decreased over the storage period. The water activity for each batch during the storage period remained between 0.93 and 0.97. The results for color remained stable in the first 60 days, with a change to yellow after this period. Residual sodium nitrite at baseline was 253 mg, decreasing to 168, 104, and 70 mg at 30, 60, and 90 days, respectively. Lipid oxidation remained in the range of 0.05 to 0.12 mg of malonaldehyde/kg of product until the first 60 days, with a significant increase after this period. The microorganisms studied were Aerobic Bacteria, Clostridium sulfite reducing and coagulase positive Staphylococcus, which did not show growth, indicating that the form of packaging, the phenols resulting from natural smoking and the curing salts of the formulation form an efficient barrier against these microorganisms. With the results presented, it can be concluded that bacon has physicochemical and microbiological stability for 60 days, and cannot be extended to 90 days, as the parameters studied begin to change. However, the production process needs better standardization, as there are considerable variations between batches. It is known that the raw material varies naturally, but the production parameter must be better defined to minimize large variations within the same batches.