The objective is to elaborate fish restructured products based in minced fish muscle that due to a previous processing, its protein has lose thir functionality which invalid the possibility of gelation which is importan to make structures. For that purpose aqueous dispersions of glucomannan (AGD) were prepared at 3 and 6% (w/v) total polysaccharide concentration using distilled warm water at 80ºC in a Stephan vacuum homogenizer machine (Stephan Machinery GmbH & Co., Hameln, Germany) for 30 minutes and then left to cool at room temperature. To make fish mince gels, different proportions of AGD at 3 and 6 (w/v) and mince (50:50 and 25:75) (w/w) respectively, were mixed in a Stephan vacuum homogenizer at below 30ºC during 5 min to obtain a final glucomannan concentration of 1.5%. Then 0.6N KOH was added to bring the pH up to 11.8- 12. At this pH a deacetylation of 95- 100 % is obtained. The samples were placed in petri dishes (1.5 cm thick and 9.0 cm diameter). Then they were set by heating for 1 hour at 30ºC and then for 4 hours at 5ºC. The last step was to neutralize the pH of the gels; this was done by keeping them for 20 hours in a 0.2M citrate-phosphate buffer at pH 5 (gel:buffer proportion 1:10) at chilled temperature. The end products were heat-stable gels with an approximate pH of 6.5-7. The texture of this restructured products was similar to the fish muscle.
Spanish Patent 2363291. Date of publication 28/07/2011.
Contact for further information to: A. Javier Borderías
