Development of Supercooling as a storage technique for pork

Supercooling is a food processing technique which has the potential to significantly increase the shelf life of foods and to reduce wastage of food products from the production and retail sectors. The process uses storage temperatures below the initial freezing point of the food without the product freezing, which maintains the quality attributes associated with fresh foods. This paper reports trials carried out to determine best methods to supercool pork meat and methods to maintain the supercooled state. Trials were carried out to compare storage life of pork meat that had been supercooled with samples that had been superchilled and conventionally chilled. Colour, texture, weight loss, drip loss and microbiology of samples was measured and compared. The supercooled and superchilled samples were quite similar in all respects apart from the superchilled samples had greater drip loss.