Water in chicken exists in three forms: combined water, non flowing water and free water. PH value, spatial effect, heating and lipid oxidation are all important reasons for the dry and hard meat, poor taste and low yield of chicken products. Water holding capacity directly means yield, juiciness and profit. It is also one of the important indicators in the evaluation of meat products. Let's talk about whether food grade sodium tripolyphosphate can be added to regulate chicken processing.

Phosphate in the processing of meat products can improve the adhesion of meat, improve the slicing performance of meat products, improve the water holding capacity of meat and reduce the nutritional components of meat. It is widely used in the processing of meat products. Food grade sodium tripolyphosphate is one of the commonly used additives, which can be used alone or in combination with sodium pyrophosphate and sodium hexametaphosphate.

Theoretically, food grade sodium tripolyphosphate affects meat products from these aspects:

1. Increase the pH value of meat

The pH value of mature meat is generally about 5.7, which is close to the isoelectric point of protein in meat, so the water retention of meat is very poor. The pH value of 1% sodium tripolyphosphate solution is 9.5-9.8, which can make the pH value of raw meat deviate from the isoelectric point.

2. Chelating metal ions in meat

The hydroxyl group in muscle protein is free. Due to the electrostatic force between carboxyl groups, the protein structure is relaxed. Food grade sodium tripolyphosphate can combine with Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions bound to muscle structural protein to make the protein negatively charged, so as to increase the electrostatic repulsion between carboxyl groups, lead to loose protein structure and accelerate the penetration and diffusion of saline.

3. Increase the ionic strength of meat

Food grade sodium tripolyphosphate is a compound with multivalent anions, which can have high ionic strength at low concentration. In a certain range of ionic strength, protein solubility and extraction amount increased with the increase of ionic strength. It is conducive to the dissolution of myofibrillar protein.

4. Dissociated actin

In vivo, the body can synthesize adenosine triphosphate that dissociates actin, but after slaughter, due to the decrease of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) level, actin can not be dissociated into actin and myosin, which reduces the water holding capacity of meat.

Oligomeric phosphate (pyrophosphate, tripolyphosphate) has the similar effect of adenosine triphosphate, can dissociate actin into actin and myosin, increase the water holding capacity of meat, and improve the tenderness of meat.

In order to ensure the water holding capacity of chicken, food grade sodium tripolyphosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium pyrophosphate are used in the processing of chicken breast and chicken leg, and the proportion of compound phosphate is different.

For chicken breast meat, the addition scheme was as follows: sodium pyrophosphate 21.8%, sodium tripolyphosphate 45.6%, sodium hexametaphosphate 32.6%, and the addition amount was 0.3%. For chicken leg meat, the addition scheme is: sodium pyrophosphate: sodium tripolyphosphate: sodium hexametaphosphate = 2:2:1, and the addition amount is 0.3%.