Development of Shelf Stable Ready-to-Eat Pork Curry Using Retort Processing Technology

Abstract

Processed pork products are highly perishable and they need to be stored under refrigeration temperature throughout storage, distribution, and marketing to maintain quality. Retort processing technology helps obviate the requirement of refrigeration during storage of food products and thereby enables production of food products which can be stored at ambient temperature. Keeping this advantage in mind, experiments were undertaken to develop formulation and process schedule for production of thermally processed shelf stable ‘pork curry’. Curry products are spicy Indian traditional food products prepared with meat, vegetables, spices, condiments etc. In this experiment, pork chunks were shallow fried in a pan until the core temperature reaches about 50 °C. Gravy ingredients were prepared separately and semi cooked until temperature reaches about 90 °C. About 75 g of the fried meat and 125 g of the vegetable curry was put in retort pouches. Filled-in retort pouches were sealed with impulse sealing machine. For thermal processing, the retort temperature was maintained at 121 °C. Pressure of the retort was maintained at 20 ± 1 psi throughout the process. Core temperature of the product was measured using copper thermocouples. F₀ of 11.81 was found to be adequate for pork curry. Total process time was 48 min. Retort pouched products were analyzed for storage stability. Product was found to be of good quality up to 6 months of storage at ambient temperature.