Poultry Meat Products

WITHIN the last couple of decades, many new processed poultry products have been introduced in the market. The poultry industry has taken the initiative to develop fresh, marinated and fully cooked products and has adopted some red meat recipes. All have helped to increase consumption and move away from seasonal demand. In the beginning, red meat recipes were modified to manufacture poultry products (e.g., frankfurters), and later, new technologies were developed exclusively for poultry (e.g., chicken nuggets). Overall, the poultry industry successfully responded to consumer demand for more convenient food items including semi- and fully prepared items. The increase in poultry meat consumption has been the result of aggressive marketing, the favorable nutrition profile of the meat and the competitive price of poultry meat.

Today, consumers can choose meat products from a wide variety consisting of a few hundred different products. Becoming a knowledgeable consumer can be a challenge. To assist the consumer, various systems have been suggested for classifying meat products. One of the most common ways to classify products is to group them into six categories:
. fresh, such as fresh poultry breakfast sausage
. uncooked and smoked, such as Italian sausage
. smoked and cooked, such as frankfurters, bologna
. cooked, such as liver sausage and pates
. dry/semidry or fermented, such as summer sausage, dry salami
. cooked meat specialities, such as luncheon meats, jellied products and loaves.

In addition, the development of new technologies represents two additional categories:
. restructured meat products, such as cutlets, where small bits and pieces of meat are made into a whole muscle fillet-like product (i.e., by using freezing, high pressure and hydrocolloid gums)
.surimi-like products, such as special chicken rolls, where minced meat is washed (to remove pigments and enzymes) and extruded to obtain a fiber muscle-like texture.

Sausage Process

The process of sausage manufacturing originated from the necessity to increase the uses of remnants of meat, fat of clearness meat parts and less nobles cuts, adding value to these products. There are many different types of sausages. The differences between them are related with the type of meat, the size of meat grinder disk, the seasonings, the casing diameter, the buds length and the presence or not of smoking.

Salted products Process

The salting process act in control and reduction of microorganism, increasing the product shelf-life. They are prepared in the same way, so the process is going to be explained just one time.

Smoked products Process

The smoking process, besides adding value to the meat cuts, it also makes desirable alterations like gold outside color, smoked taste and good juiciness. The smoking process associated with salt using (sodium chloride, nitrite of sodium) and with dryer, act in the reduction and control of microorganisms, and increase the products shelf-life . The creation of new product options enables alternative chooses for the consuming market and a possible additional income source for small scale producers.