Affiliation:
1. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Food Quality and Safety, Nation‐Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Machining and Safety of Livestock and Poultry Products South China Agricultural University Guangzhou China
2. College of Biological and Food Engineering Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology Maoming China
Abstract
AbstractThis study aimed to create a reduced‐salt version of Chaozhou beef meatballs (CBMs) by employing ultrasound treatment (0 and 30 min) combined with sodium bicarbonate (0%, 0.15%, and 0.3%). The ultrasound‐assisted sodium bicarbonate treatment significantly enhanced pH, salt‐soluble protein solubility (SSP), water‐holding capacity (WHC), and storage modulus (G′) of the CBMs (p < 0.05). Specifically, after treatment, the increase in pH value promoted the solubilization of SSP, with the content increasing from 28.23% to 56.53%. Moreover, the initial relaxation times (T21 and T22) were shortened, indicating a decrease in water mobility, as evidenced by an increase in WHC from 85% to 87%. Furthermore, the ultrasound treatment effectively facilitated protein unfolding, increased β‐sheet secondary structure content, augmented hydrogen and disulfide bond proportions, and resulted in a denser and more uniform gel structure. Consequently, the hardness of the CBMs was significantly improved (p < 0.05). Sensory evaluation revealed that the treated reduced‐salt CBMs were comparable to those produced by conventional methods. Therefore, combining sodium bicarbonate with ultrasound treatment is a viable approach to mitigate the negative effects of reduced salt content and produce high‐quality reduced‐salt CBMs.