Spanish Fuet Sausages Fat-Reduced to Diminish Boar Taint: Sensory and Technological Quality

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Regarding the European Union Recommendation on alternatives to surgical castration of pigs, it would be appropriate to search for new alternatives to commercialize the entire pig that could be affected by boar taint, as a sensory defect. The goal of this study was to evaluate if fat reduction in meat products could diminish the boar taint in dry-cured sausages with high levels of AND and SKA, and to study the technological and sensory quality by using inulin, β-glucan and grape fibre as fat substitutes in fat-reduced products. The addition of fibres in reduced-fat fuet provided a similar technological and sensory profile to the traditional, achieving a reduction of sexual odour. Thus, these alternative formulations in reduced-fat meat products could be useful to allow high boar-tainted pork a place in the market. ABSTRACT: Reduced-fat cured sausages were evaluated as a strategy to reduce boar taint in entire male pork products with high levels of androstenone and skatole, both lipophilic. Three fuet-type sausages (two replicates each) were developed: the control (C) (60% lean, 33.69% fat), and two reduced-fat (60% lean 21.19% fat) products; R1, 6% inulin, 0.5% β-glucan and R2, 3% inulin, 0.5% grape skin and 1% β-glucan. All of them were prepared from entire male pork with an androstenone concentration of 6.887 µg/g and 0.520 µg/g of skatole. Significant differences (p ≤ 0.001) in the moisture content were described between the fuet R1 and the C and R2, which obtained the highest percentage. Regarding the CIELAB, the C samples had the highest L* value, while the R2 sausages were the darkest. Boar taint was reduced in both R1 and R2, with a greater reduction in R2 (p ≤ 0.000). The addition of inulin and β-glucan in fuet R1 provided a similar technological and sensory profile to C. However, both strategies provided a reduction of sexual odour, which was higher when grape skins were included. In addition, R2 gave a characteristic sausage with more odour and flavour, dark colour and overall rating than C and R1.