Culinary preparation and processing of meat with wooden breast myopathy

Abstract

Recently, poultry meat production and consumption has become increased worldwide. Decades of intensive selection in poultry breeding resulted in fast-growing broilers, improved food conversion, low production costs, and high yield of breast meat, as the most valuable part of the carcass. Some side-effects of intensive production and rapid growth of broilers include the appearance of myopathies in breast muscle. Increasing attention has been paid to the defect known as "wooden breast" (WB) due its incidence and severity of anomaly. WB is characterized by the hardness and pale colour of the fillet. These changes lower the consumer acceptance of the meat, and a pronounced WB is unsuitable for culinary and industrial processing. Different procedures can be used to tenderize the meat and include physical and chemical procedures, often combined in industry. Physical procedures comprise the application of heating, mechanical force, ultrasound, electric stimulation, hydrodynamic shock wave-pressure technology, high pressure processing, and pulsed electric field. Chemical procedures include marinating, exposure to the endogenous enzymes, and the use of exoenzymes. In the future, it is necessary to develop optimal tenderizing techniques or combinations of different tenderizing techniques to achieve better sensory quality and improved nutritional value of WB.