Juline Ross V. Yandog, Aimee Esther G. Vicedo (January 1998)
Philippine Science High School Western Visayas Campus – Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PSHS WVC), Brgy. Bito-on, Jaro, Iloilo City 5000, Philippines
ABSTRACT
A lot of people nowadays who are into local curing business does not take into consideration the consistency of their method of meat preservation.
This study focuses only on the storage life of cured meat. Moisture and salt content are the two factors responsible for this. Lowering the moisture content leaves an environment in beef not suitable for bacterial growth and introduction of salt in meat also stops bacterial growth by providing turgidity to the meat. This study aims to determine the exact moisture content and salt content the beef meat needs in order to sustain an optimum storage life.
After performing the experiments the researchers noticed the researchers noticed that in determining moisture content of meat, after about 5 hours or 300 minute of heating the meat in the oven, the rate of mass decrease was zero. In occurring and testing for effectiveness of curing meat, the researchers found out that samples dried with 10% moisture content at 15% salt dilution has the lowest number of bacterial colonies after 2 days.
Therefore, the researchers concluded that cured meat having a moisture content of 10% and injected with 15% solution of brine is the most effective combination in meat curing.