Smoking is mainly used to impart desirable flavour, colour and texture to the products. Various food smoking methods can be divided into traditional and industrial methods. The influences of three different smoking methods, including traditional smouldering smoke (TSS), industrial smouldering smoke (ISS) and industrial liquid smoke (ILS), on quality characteristics, sensory attributes and flavour profiles of Harbin red sausages were studied. The smoking methods had significant effects on the moisture content (55.74–61.72 g/100 g), L*-value (53.85–57.61), a*-value (11.97–13.15), b*-value (12.19–12.92), hardness (24.25–29.17 N) and chewiness (13.42–17.32). A total of 86 volatile compounds were identified by headspace solid phase microextraction combined with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC × GC-qMS). Among them, phenolic compounds were the most abundant compounds in the all sausages. Compared with sausages smoked with smouldering smoke, the ILS sausages showed the highest content of volatile compounds, especially phenols, alcohols, aldehydes and ketones. Principal component analysis showed that the sausages smoked with different methods had a good separation based on the quality characteristics and GC × GC-qMS data. These results will facilitate optimising the smoking methods in the industrial production of smoked meat products.
Discrimination of defective dry-cured Iberian ham determining volatile compounds by non-destructive sampling and gas chromatography
