Replacing animal fat with edible mushrooms: a strategy to produce high-quality and low-fat buffalo meatballs

Abstract

The present work investigated the effects of replacing the fat in meatballs with enoki, brown beech, shiitake, white oyster, brown, or king oyster mushrooms on the physicochemical and sensorial characteristics of the reduced-fat meatballs. The water holding capacity of the reduced-fat meatballs increased significantly (14.4 - 36.5%) in parallel to a significant increase in the moisture (3.3 - 5.6%) and protein (4.1 - 7.5%) contents, with a decrease in fat (16.3 - 86.3%) content as compared to the control. No differences were found for the cooking yield and texture properties of the samples, except for the king oyster mushroom which reduced the hardness of the reduced-fat meatballs. The redness of the reduced-fat meatballs was comparable with the control, but reduced in yellowness and lightness. Most of the reduced-fat meatballs had better sensory characteristics as compared to the control, in particular, the meatballs with shiitake mushroom. In conclusion, all the mushrooms tested have the potential to be used as a full fat replacer in meatballs, except for king oyster mushroom which reduced the texture quality of the reduced-fat meatballs.