Heat penetration and quality attributes of superheated steam sterilization (SHS) home meal replacement (HMR) meat products stew

Retort sterilization (RTS) is essential for the production of shelf-stable home meal replacement (HMR)-type Korean foods. However, the thermal abuse caused by excessive retort processing can result in quality degradation. Short processing times can minimize quality degradation and nutritional loss during sterilization. The potential of superheated steam sterilization (SHS) for producing shelf-stable HMR was investigated. The effect of SHS at 140 °C on HMR meat products stew was compared with that of RTS. SHS allowed a rapid temperature increase in the sausages and spam. In the sterilization equivalence of sausage, SHS at 140 °C and 1 s showed the F₀ value of 34.7 ± 5.9 which could sufficiently satisfy the microbial safety standard of F₀ values at 7–10 min. Thermal doses of SHS treated sausage was 97 ± 9 k°C·s which has lesser values (119 ± 9 k°C·s) than that of RTS. The sausage hardness after SHS was 107.7 ± 13.3 N, which has lower thermal degradation than the 78.9 ± 7.1 N observed after RTS. This study demonstrates the potential of SHS treatment for maintaining the quality of sterilized HMR products.