Investigation of the effect of pork compositions on freezing points in different pork cuts by measuring thermal properties and water mobility and distribution

This work was to compare the difference of freezing point in the four pork cuts (chuck roll, picnic shoulder, loin, and topside) and evaluate the effect of pork compositions on the freezing points. Loin exhibited lower freezing points and accompanied by higher content of unfreezable water, lower relaxation times, and higher proportions of bound water, compared with other pork cuts. Low freezing points of pork may be attributed to high sarcoplasmic protein solubility, due to high sarcoplasmic protein solubility related to increase of bound water proportion and decrease of NMR T-2 relaxometry. In addition, correlation analysis revealed that sarcoplasmic protein solubility and ash content were negatively related to the freezing point, which was verified by a quadratic polynomial correlation between the sarcoplasmic protein solubility and the freezing point in vitro. These results could help to better understand the freezing point of pork and provide more theories for improving superchilled storage.