The use of sodium bicarbonate for marination of broiler breast meat

This study aimed at evaluating marination performances and effect on meat quality traits of sodium bicarbonate, used alone or in combination with sodium chloride, when compared with sodium trypolyphosphate by using advanced analytical tools including low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). A total of 140 samples (cylindrical shape of 1×4 cm size) were obtained from a batch of 24h post mortem broiler breast meat (Ross 708, females, 47 day-old). Six of the groups were used for subsequent marination treatments, while the last group was kept as non-marinated control (C). Samples were subjected to vacuum tumbling in a special equipped laboratory rotary evaporator with a 12% (w/w) water:meat ratio using 6 marinade solutions: 7.7% (w/w) NaCl (S); 2.3% Na4O7P2 (w/w) (P); 2.3% (w/w) NaHCO3 (B); 7.7% (w/w) NaCl and 2.3% Na4O7P2 (w/w) (SP); 7.7% (w/w) NaCl and 2.3% (w/w) NaHCO3 (SB); 7.7% (w/w) NaCl, 2.3% Na4O7P2 (w/w) and 2.3% (w/w) NaHCO3 (SPB). Samples marinated with bicarbonate alone or in combination (B, SB and SPB) significantly increased (P<0.05) meat pH by approximately 0.7 units compared to the control, whilst phosphate alone or in combination with salt increased (P<0.05) the pH by 0.2 units. Combination containing all ingredients (SPB) produced the highest marinade performances, however sodium bicarbonate with salt (SB) was able to guarantee a better marinade uptake and water retention ability in respect to phosphates (SP). According to LR-NMR, the combined use of bicarbonate and/or phosphate with sodium chloride determined a remarkable increase of proportion of entrapped water into myofibrillar spaces, while extra-myofibrillar water fraction was not modified. Moreover water gain following marination does not correspond to an increase of freezable water amount as detected by DSC. In conclusion, bicarbonate is a very promising marinating agent and it can be exploited to develop processed poultry products with no added phosphates in order to match the request to avoid the nutritional drawbacks recently indicated with the use of phosphates.