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J APPL POULT RES 2007. 16:537-545. doi:10.3382/japr.2006-00121
© 2007 Poultry Science Association
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Research Reports

Effect of Chilling Method and Deboning Time on Broiler Breast Fillet Quality

R. Huezo*, J. K. Northcutt{dagger},1, D. P. Smith{dagger} and D. L. Fletcher{ddagger}

* University of Georgia, Athens, 30605; {dagger} USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Athens, GA 30604; and {ddagger} University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269

Correspondence: 1 Corresponding author: julie.northcutt{at}ars.usda.gov


   SUMMARY
TOP
 SUMMARY
DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
 CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
 REFERENCES AND NOTES
 
A study was conducted to determine the effects of chilling method and postmortem aging time on broiler breast fillet quality. One hundred fifty eviscerated broiler carcasses were removed from a commercial processing line before chilling and transported to the laboratory. Half of the carcasses were chilled by dry air, whereas the other half were chilled by water immersion. Immersion-chilled (IC) carcasses were divided into 3 groups (0, 1.67, and 24 h) based on postchill fillet aging time on the carcass. Air-chilled (AC) carcasses were divided into 2 groups based on fillet aging time (0 and 24 h postchill). Because AC requires more time to reach the same temperature, fillets removed immediately after chilling (0 h) were the same postmortem age as the 1.67 h IC fillets. Average pH values of IC and AC fillets were similar when fillets were aged for the same length of time postmortem. Method of chilling had no effect on raw breast fillet color; however, postmortem aging time had a slight but significant effect on fillet lightness. Shear values of IC fillets removed 0 and 1.67 h after chilling were similar and corresponded to sensory panel categories of slightly tough to tough (>8 kg/g). Shear values of AC fillets deboned at 0 h (8.4 kg/g) were slightly lower but not significantly different than the shear values for IC fillets (10.3 kg/g) aged for the same length of time (1.67 h). After 24 h of aging, shear values for IC and AC fillets were <8 kg/g and corresponded to sensory panel categories of tender to very tender. Cook yield (%) of AC fillets was significantly higher than cook yield (%) of IC fillets for all deboning times. Results show that air chilling has an accelerating effect on rigor mortis onset, but postchill aging time is required to maximize the proportion of tender meat.

Key Words: poultry • immersion chilling • air chilling • aging time • poultry meat color • tenderness


   DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
TOP
 SUMMARY
 DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
MATERIALS AND METHODS
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
 CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
 REFERENCES AND NOTES
 
According to the National Chicken Council, approximately 8.9 billion broiler carcasses were processed in the United States in 2005. Of these, only 7.5% were marketed as whole carcasses, whereas the remaining 92.5% were further processed [1, 2]. Further processing begins immediately after chilling with carcasses cut into fore-and hindquarters. Most of the hindquarters are marketed as fresh or frozen bone-in parts. Wings and breast fillets are removed from forequarters and used in further-processed products or marketed as fresh skinless deboned products [3]. Further-processed carcass parts depend on tenderness and appearance for consumer acceptability. Early deboning of fillets (before rigor mortis completion) is the primary cause of increased incidence of tough broiler breast meat [3].

Several studies have been conducted to determine the optimum postmortem aging time on the carcass to prevent breast fillet toughness. Tenderness of broiler breast meat typically requires 4 to 6 h of aging time before deboning [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. Aging fillets before deboning allows the development and resolution of rigor mortis and meat tenderization [8, 12, 17, 18]. Aging carcasses or breast halves is costly because of space required to store carcasses, energy cost, and logistics of moving product. Many processors would prefer to debone fillets immediately after chilling, which would be 0.5 to 0.83 h of dwell time for immersion [19, 20] and 1.5 to 2.5 h for air-chilling systems [21, 22]. To obtain the 4- to 6-h optimal aging time, processors currently must store intact carcasses or forequarters at refrigerated temperatures (<4°C) an additional 2.5 to 4.5 h before deboning [23].

Temperature of the breast muscle during postmortem aging has been demonstrated to affect fillet quality [8, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28]. Previous studies have indicated that elevated temperatures or slower chilling rates may accelerate postmortem glycolysis and ultimate meat texture and functional properties [29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37]. Huezo et al. [38] demonstrated that chilling method (air or immersion) had no effect on breast fillet tenderness when fillets are de-boned 24 h postchill. However, there is no information available comparing breast fillet functionality of early deboned broiler carcasses chilled by either immersion or air. Therefore, the present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of deboning time and chilling method (immersion or air) on breast fillet pH, color, cook loss, and tenderness.


   MATERIALS AND METHODS
TOP
 SUMMARY
 DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
 CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
 REFERENCES AND NOTES
 
Broiler Carcass Procurement
During each of 3 replications, 50 eviscerated broiler carcasses were removed from a commercial processing line before chilling, placed into coolers, and transported to the laboratory. Carcasses were tagged on the wing [39] and weighed. After weighing, carcasses were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 chilling treatments: immersion or air chilling (Figure 1Go).


Figure 1
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  		Figure 1. Experimental design for each of 3 replications.

 
Chilling Treatments
Carcasses were chilled by immersion in ice water or by cold air without any water spray. Immersion-chilled (IC) carcasses were submersed in 133 L (35 gal) of a mixture of ice and tap water (approximately 0.6°C) in a prototype tumble chiller. The paddles in the tumble chiller were operated at 2 rpm for the duration of the 50-min (0.83 h) chill. After IC, carcasses were hung in shackles and allowed to drip for 5 min and then placed in 3 groups of 9 carcasses per group and assigned to 0, 1.67, and 24 h postchill aging time before deboning (Figure 1Go). Air-chilled (AC) carcasses were cooled for 150 min (2.5 h). Air was distributed directly into the abdominal cavity of each carcass by specially modified channels that provided a continuous flow (3.5 m/s) of cold air (approximately –1.1°C). Air-chilled carcasses were deboned at 0 and 24 h postchill. Because AC requires more time, AC fillets deboned immediately after chilling (0 h) were aged for the same length of time postmortem as the 1.67 h IC fillets.

Postchill carcasses were individually bagged and held on ice in a 4°C cold room until deboning. For each treatment and replication, 1 to 3 carcasses were selected for continuous monitoring of internal breast temperature with a Cox recorder [40].

Deboning and Cooking
At each deboning time, the left and right breast fillets (pectoralis) were manually removed and individually tagged. From each pair of fillets, 1 was used for pH and color determination, whereas the other fillet was cooked and used for yield evaluation and tenderness. Fillets selected for cook yield and shear determination were weighed individually, placed on aluminum trays, and cooked at 95°C in a steam cooker for 0.25 h. After cooking, fillets were covered with aluminum foil, allowed to cool to room temperature, and then reweighed to determine cooked yield. Cook yield of fillets was calculated by dividing the raw fillet weight by the cooked fillet weight and multiplying this ratio by 100.

Shear Values
Shear values were determined according to the method described by Smith et al. [41] with modifications. Briefly, this method uses an Allo-Kramer (AK) multiple blade shear cell on an Instron Universal Testing Machine [42]. A 25-mm diameter round core was removed from the thickest part of each fillet. Cores were weighed to the nearest 0.1 g and then placed in the shear cell such that the blades would shear the sample perpendicular to the direction of the surface fibers. Samples were sheared using a 500-kg load cell with cross head speed of 500 mm/min. Shear values are calculated by dividing the maximum kilograms of shear by the sample core weight and are expressed as kilograms of shear per gram of sample.

Color Measurements
For raw fillet color, the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) system color profile of lightness (L*), redness (a*), and yellowness (b*) was measured using a Minolta Chromameter CR-300 [43]. The colorimeter was calibrated throughout the study using a standard white ceramic tile [44]. Only areas free from obvious defects (bruises, discolorations, hemorrhages, full blood vessels, or any other condition that might have affected uniform color reading) were selected for color measurements. For fillet color determination, measurements were made on the medial surface (bone side) to avoid breast fillet surface discolorations due to possible overscalding in the plant.

pH Determination
Fillet pH was determined on samples that were removed from the cranial area of each breast fillet. Two and a half grams was mixed with 25 mL of a 5-mM iodoacetate solution with 150 mM potassium chloride for 30 s. The pH of the homogenate was determined using a pH meter [45] calibrated at pH 4.0 and 7.0 [46].

Statistical Analysis
Raw fillet pH and color and cooked fillet yield and shear were analyzed using an ANOVA procedure of the GLM of SAS [47] with replication and treatment as the main effects of the model. Treatment mean differences were tested by multiple linear contrasts using the residual error and a significance level of P <0.05. When the interaction between replication and treatment was found to be significant, it was used as the error term to test linear contrasts. The comparisons of interest were 0 h AC vs. 0 h IC (postchill comparison); 0 h AC vs. 1.67 h IC (physiological comparison); and 24 h AC vs. 24 h IC (aged comparison).


   RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
TOP
 SUMMARY
 DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
 REFERENCES AND NOTES
 
Table 1Go shows the effect of broiler carcass chilling method and deboning time on raw fillet color. Deboning time significantly affected lightness (L*) of breast fillets from both air- and IC carcasses. A significant difference in lightness was observed between IC breast fillets deboned immediately after chilling and after 1.67 h postchill, but no significant change was observed after 1.67 h postchill (P >0.05). A slight but significant increase in lightness was observed for AC fillets deboned immediately after chilling and after 24 h (P <0.05). An increase in lightness with longer aging time was previously reported in turkey breast fillets [48]. Petracci and Fletcher [49] reported a reduction in broiler breast fillet lightness with time, but these authors sampled the surface of the fillets under the skin, which may have been affected by moisture absorption during chilling. Papinaho et al. [7] reported that deboning time did not affect lightness, redness, or yellowness of AC fillets when color was measured 24 h after deboning. Their findings indicate that any color change of early deboned breast fillets disappears when rigor mortis is completed. Fletcher [50] provided a review of the correlation between poultry breast meat lightness (L*) and breast muscle pH. In general, he suggested that as muscle pH decreases, the lightness values increase, with a correlation coefficient between –0.6 and –0.8. Thus, the increased lightness with later deboning time observed during the present experiment may be caused by postmortem glycolysis and gradual lowering of muscle pH, which affects water holding, surface translucence, and muscle reflectivity [50].


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  		Table 1. Effect of broiler carcass deboning time and chilling method on raw fillet color
 
The effects of broiler carcass chilling method and deboning time on raw fillet pH, cooked fillet yield, and cooked fillet shear values are presented in Table 2Go. The pH of IC breast fillets deboned 0 h postchill was significantly higher than the pH of IC fillets deboned 1.67 h or 24 h postchill. No significant difference in pH was observed for fillets from IC carcasses deboned 1.67 h and 24 h postchill (P >0.05). Fillets removed from AC carcasses at 0 or 24 h postchill had comparable pH values. Postmortem time for muscle to reach its ultimate pH may be 4 to 6 h [6, 7, 16, 51, 52], but some studies have reported ultimate pH in poultry as early as 2 h postmortem [14, 53]. Different results for time to reach ultimate muscle pH may be due to differences in initial glycogen levels, bird strain, sex (body size and fat), stunning procedures, and other physiological factors [7].


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  		Table 2. Effect of broiler carcass deboning time and chilling method on cooked fillet yield and shear and raw fillet pH
 
Deboning at 0 or 1.67 h after chilling did not affect cook yield or shear values of IC breast fillets, but cook yield and tenderness were improved when fillets were deboned 24 h postchill (P <0.05). Northcutt et al. [5] reported that fillets removed immediately after immersion chilling had the lowest cook yield, but cook loss decreased when fillets were aged for 2 h or more. Similar findings have been reported by Liu et al. [13]. In another study, Northcutt et al. [54] showed that breast fillets lost approximately0.4% of their weight (drip loss) during the first 6 h postmortem and approximately 1% after 24 h postmortem. However, carcasses from this study were not immersion-chilled, and weight loss was inherent moisture. Based on these studies, fillets deboned 24 h postchill should have a greater amount of moisture loss before deboning and a higher cook yield compared with fillets deboned early postmortem. Others studies have contradicted this concept and reported either no differences [7, 55] or a decreased trend in cook yield with later deboning times [6, 56, 57]. The conflicting results may be related to differences in breast fillet storage conditions, storage time before cooking, or time of weighing.

Biochemical changes in muscles during rigor mortis and the associated effect on fillet pH and tenderness have been studied by many researchers [6, 7, 14, 27, 28, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59]. In general, as an animal dies from anoxia, the muscle cells continue to respire and to produce and consume adenosine triphosphate. During the perimortem period (death struggle), muscle tissue continues to contract and relax, depleting cellular oxygen and causing a shift to anaerobic glycolysis until energy reserves are depleted. The primary product of anaerobic glycolysis is lactic acid, which accumulates and decreases muscle pH. At this point, adenosine triphosphate is not available to dissociate the actin and myosin filaments (uncoupling), and they remain complexed as actomyosin. Any prerigor cutting or trimming of meat results in a tough product, because there is nothing to restrict the shortening of skeletal muscle [27, 34, 60, 61].

Table 3Go shows the probabilities for comparisons between chilling methods at different de-boning times for raw fillet pH and color and cooked fillet yield and shear. When AC and IC fillets were deboned at 0 h postchill, AC fillets had a significantly lower pH and a significantly higher cook yield (P <0.05). The lower pH for AC fillets resulted from the difference in postmortem time and the difference in carcass cooling rates. No significant difference in shear or color was observed between AC and IC fillets. Cook yield of AC fillets deboned 0 h post-chill was 1.9% higher than IC fillets carcasses deboned 1.67 h postchill. When fillets were deboned 24 h postchill, cook yield of AC fillets was 2.7% higher than IC (P <0.05). The lower cook yield of IC fillets may have resulted from high moisture absorption during chilling and subsequent loss during cooking [38]. No significant difference was observed in pH, raw fillet color, or shear values when IC fillets de-boned 1.67 h postchill were compared with AC fillets deboned 0 h postchill or when AC and IC fillets were deboned 24 h postchill. The AK shear values of AC fillets deboned 0 h postchill were nearly 2 kg/g lower than IC fillets deboned 1.67 h postchill, a difference that can be distinguished by a sensory panel [62].


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  		Table 3. Probabilities for the cross-comparisons between deboning times and chilling methods for cooked fillet yield and Allo-Kramer (AK) shear and raw fillet pH and color
 
Simpson and Goodwin [63] compared AK multiple blade shear values with sensory measures of tenderness and concluded that values above 8 kg of force per gram of sample corresponded to sensory scores of slightly tough to tough, and values below 8 kg/g corresponded to scores of tender to very tender. Using these values as reference, Table 4Go shows the distribution of cooked breast fillet shear values according to sensory measures of tenderness for both chilling method and the deboning times. When IC and AC fillets were deboned at 1.67 h and 0 h postchill, respectively (approximately 3 h postmortem for both treatments), 70% of the IC fillets were considered slightly tough to tough compared with 44% of the AC fillets. For the same group of carcasses, there were more AC fillets that could be considered tender to very tender than IC fillets (56 vs. 30%). After 24 h, 100% of the fillets from both chilling treatments had shear values that corresponded to the tender to very tender sensory category.


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  		Table 4. Distribution of cooked breast fillet shear values according to sensory tenderness, chilling method, and deboning time
 
Figure 2Go shows the pH distribution of raw breast fillets deboned 0 h after AC or after 1.67 h of IC. Immediately after chilling, approximately 70% of IC fillets had pH higher than 5.8, compared with 40% of AC fillets. This suggests an accelerated rigor mortis in the AC fillets compared with the IC fillets, because 25% more AC fillets had a pH lower than 5.8.


Figure 2
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  		Figure 2. Distribution of raw breast fillet pH deboned 0 h post-air chilling ({blacksquare}) or 1.67 h post-immersion chilling ({square}).

 
Figure 3Go shows the pH distribution of raw breast fillets deboned 24 h after chilling. There is no difference in the pH distribution between the 2 chilling methods. This indicates that chilling method has no effect on ultimate pH for carcasses deboned 24 h postchill, and these data correspond with the texture findings that showed no difference after 24 h of aging.


Figure 3
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  		Figure 3. Distribution of raw breast fillet pH deboned 24 h post-air chilling ({blacksquare}) or post-immersion chilling ({square}).

 
Results show that breast fillet color, pH, and texture of carcasses with the same postmortem time were not affected by chilling method. Percentage of cook yield was higher for AC fillets compared with IC fillets. Air chilling appears to have an effect on rigor mortis, but postchill aging time is required to maximize the proportion of tender meat.


   CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
TOP
 SUMMARY
 DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
 CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
REFERENCES AND NOTES
 

  1. Percentage of cook yield for breast fillets is improved with longer aging time.
  2. Fillet lightness increases, whereas pH and shear value decrease with aging time.
  3. Breast fillet color, pH, and texture from carcasses with the same postmortem aging time are not affected by chilling method.
  4. Air chilling may have an accelerating effect on rigor mortis, but additional carcass aging time is required to maximize the proportion of tender meat.


   REFERENCES AND NOTES
TOP
 SUMMARY
 DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
 CONCLUSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
 REFERENCES AND NOTES
 

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