Effect of different smoking methods on the quality of pork sausages

AIM: An experiment was conducted to evaluate the nutritional, physicochemical, microbiological, and sensory attributes of pork sausages treated with conventional smoking (CS) and liquid smoke (LS). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Pork sausages were prepared by employing CS (T(1)) and by addition of LS at 3% (T(2A)), 5% (T(2B)), and 7% (T(2C)) while smoking was not done in control (C) sausages. The ready-to-eat pork sausages were evaluated in terms of proximate composition, emulsion stability (ES), cooking loss (CL), pH, water activity (a(w)), texture profile analysis (TPA), and shear force on the day of preparation and the shelf life of the sausages was evaluated on the basis of thiobarbituric acid reactive substance (TBARS) value, organoleptic qualities, total viable plate count, total psychrophilic count, and yeast and mold counts at 5-day interval up to 15 days under refrigerated storage (6±1°C). RESULTS: The mean percentage moisture and percentage ether extract contents of the conventionally smoked sausages (T(1)) exhibited significant difference (p≤0.01) with the rest of the formulations. However, in terms of mean percentage crude protein and percentage total solids, no significant difference (p≥0.05) was recorded between the treatment groups. The mean ES (ml of oil/100 g emulsion) of the different sausage emulsions ranged from 1.88 to 3.20, while the mean a(w) values among the sausage formulations were found to be non-significant. In terms of mean percentage, CL and pH values, significantly lowest (p≤0.01) values were recorded by the T(1) sausages. The mean TBARS values recorded at different periods of time in respect of all the treatment groups ranged from 0.10 to 0.33 mg malanoldehyde [MDA]/kg of sausages which are well within the permissible limit. The highest shear force values (KgF) were recorded by the sausages of T(1) formulation (p≤0.01), while TPA of the sausages did not record any significant difference (p≥0.05) among the treatments. Organoleptic studies revealed acceptability of the sausages up to 10 days of refrigerated storage irrespective of treatments employed; however, the sausages of T(1) formulation scored significantly (p≤0.01) higher panel ratings. Microbiologically, sausages with different formulations were found to be within the acceptable limit up to the 15(th) day of refrigerated storage. CONCLUSION: The study revealed that traditional hot smoking has slightly higher edges over the LS-treated sausages in terms of lipid oxidation, microbiological safety, and sensory panel ratings. However, if not superior, the same was found to be well within the acceptable limit in case of LS-treated sausages proving the potentiality of the use of LS as a suitable replacement for the traditional hazardous hot smoking process.