Effect of cooking temperatures on characteristics and microstructure of camel meat emulsion sausages.

Background: The camel is an excellent source of high quality meat and camel meat might be a potential alternative for beef. This study aimed to manipulate the raw camel meat for the production of stable and acceptable emulsion sausage, as well as to study the effect of cooking at different core temperatures on the tenderness, sensory quality and microstructure of produced sausage.

Results: Increasing the cooking temperature of sausages resulted in reduction of the shear force values from 2.67 kgf after cooking at 85 °C to 1.57 kgf after cooking at 105 °C. The sensory scores of sausages have been improved by increasing the cooking core temperature of meat batter. The light and scanning electron microscope micrographs revealed solubilisation of the high quantity of connective tissue of camel meat. High emulsion stability values for the camel meat batter associated with high values of water-holding capacity for raw camel meat and meat batter have been recorded.

Conclusion: Stable and acceptable camel meat emulsion can be developed from camel meat. Increasing the cooking core temperature of meat batter improved the quality of produced sausages. Therefore, camel meat emulsion sausages might be a potential alternative for beef particularly in Asian and African countries. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry.