Soy protein is used in meat products for many qualities. This plant-derived ingredient has a key role in improving the products’ physical and nutritional characteristics and shelf life. All of these functions can be provided by soy protein in food; the wall-like structure holds the foods together and preserves the moisture of foods. It also has the potential to enhance the degree of conformation of the meat products including but not limited to meatballs, sausages, and the rest.
What is Soy Protein?
Soy protein is recognized as a food ingredient which works as the functional one in place of fortification of the necessary human amino acid required while they have functional cholesterol property. Such properties include foaming, gelling, and emulsification properties that indeed help in enhancing greatly the textural quality of the food not forgetting elasticity and oil and water absorption capacities. Soy in meat also plays a role in enhancing storage capacity as well as the cost of manufacturing processed meat products.
Types of Soy Proteins
Soy Powder
Soy protein isolate in the form of powder is widely used in different foods today because of its several advantages. It is produced from defatted soybean flakes and heat treated to preserve its protein and is valuable to food producers. It’s one of the major benefits is its capacity to entrain not less than double its weight water which is suitable for increasing the water activity in products such as veggie burgers, soft diet, and any processed food.
Soy protein powder also has other functional properties which include, an emulsifying effect since it has with ability to keep water and fat emulsified hence keeping oil separated from its water phase during cooking or heat treatment. Nonetheless, since soy protein powder has little flavor and causes minor changes in texture, its incorporation in some of the meat products may be constrained to the specific tastes and texture required for the finished product.
Soy Protein Concentrate
A readily available type of soy protein is the soy protein concentrate with a higher preference for different meat products. It has at least 70% protein and is widely used to increase the protein content of numerous foods that are eaten across the world. The other advantage is its potential to improve the structure of the final meat products, making the framework firmer and cohesiveness that replicates the real meat texture.
As is well understood, the degree of water / fat ratio seems to be one of the most crucial parameters in food processing applications. When added as an ingredient Soy protein concentrate ratio helps in maintaining the standardization of the product by floating the water and fat. Hence this functionality helps to improve texture as well as makes the product stable with better moisture content.
Soy Protein Isolate
Soy protein isolate is made from low-temperature defatted soybean meal containing high protein and includes soy protein. This soy protein isolate powder product is identified to be greater than 90% protein and more than 20 kinds of amino acids, of which are all essential amino acids. Since this additive is rich in nutrients, and it’s cholesterol-free, it is commonly used in processed products and more so in processed meat products.
Textured Soy Protein
Textured soy protein is obtained from the mechanically and thermally treated defatted soy flour, soy protein concentrate, or soy protein isolate by a process of mixing, extrusion, and expansion. This kind of soy protein is unique from the others because it has a chewy constitution like meat; thus, textured soy protein is suitable for replacing some of the lean meat in various kinds of processed meats.
How to Use Soy Protein?
Soy protein consumption is important, especially for meat products, therefore, understanding how to use soy protein to its optimum benefits is in the final product. Its diverse properties perform the function of defining the extent of its effect on meat products.
Water-Holding Capacity
A good soy protein powder holds water very well. This characteristic of the soy protein has a most significant role in the production of meat products particularly in the minced meat sector. In these processes, it truly assimilates water and grips it, maintaining the quality of the final product; meat products since it prevents the loss of natural meat juice which enhances not only flavor and texture but also boosts the yield of the products.
The ability of this soy protein to swell is determined by many factors such as viscosity, pH value, ionic strength, and temperature. The effect of the addition of soy protein isolate to salt-soluble muscle protein in heat-induced gels showed that the addition of the soy protein isolate made the overall structure in mixed protein gel qualitatively much rougher and quantitatively the strength of the gel less and water-holding capacity higher.
Emulsification Properties
Another characteristic associated with functionality that occurs when soy protein is incorporated into products such as meat is emulsification properties. Soy protein meat products that need emulsification serve this property well. Soy protein emulsion stability properties are dominated by the hydrophilic and lipophilic character of the omega soy protein. In the capacity of a surfactant, soy protein helps reduce the tension in the two categories of water oil boundaries and water air boundaries. This has the added advantage of permitting stable emulsions to be formed with minimal disturbance. These oil droplets which are in an emulsified state can easily be stabilized by the proteins that accumulate on the surface of the oil droplets hence preventing the breaking down of the emulsions and or coalescing of the droplets.
From several researches, it has been observed that the use of soy protein isolate in the form of an emulsifier in various types of baked foods, frozen foods, and soups, is useful in maintaining the stability of the product.
Binding Properties
Soy protein is also used in the production of meat products because of the characteristics of soy protein products from the viewpoint of binding properties. This additive is used widely because of the large size of the protein molecules in combination with such beneficial qualities as high solubility, and strong absorptive capacities. All these characteristics help to boost the binding characteristics of the soy protein appropriate to change the physical nature of the foods.
In other words, when heated to approximately 80 degrees Celsius the proteins will either dissociate or precipitate to increase the molecular specific volume and viscosities.
When the temperatures have risen above ninety degrees then the viscosity is reduced. The molecular configuration is most stable with the highest viscosity and Ph at 6-8 respectively. The viscosity is cut sharply as the pH level rises beyond 11 because protein aggregation is interfered with resulting in decreased viscosity.
Gelation Properties
In some way, soy protein contributes to gelation such as the formation of networks in heated meat products to enhance the hardness, elasticity texture, and sliceability of the meat. This property largely influences the chewability of the meat products as well as the water-holding capacity of those products. Properties of the soy proteins that affect the formation of gel include; the temperature to which the proteins are heated, the heating time, and the concentration of soy protein solution.
Soy Protein Uses in Meat Products
Cost-Effective Protein Source for Nutritional Enhancement
The widespread use of soy protein in meat products results from the excellent quality and quantity of protein that it provides and its low cost. The addition of the best soy protein powder comes at a reasonable price and helps in improving protein ratios in frozen meat products and balancing nutrition.
Flavoring Effects on Processed Meat Products
Soy protein also contains small levels of fatty acids and carbohydrates which create unique soy aromatics when exposed to heat. This helps in removing the unpleasant odors from raw meat or processing techniques and adds to the flavor.
Structural Improvement in Processed Meat Products
Soy protein also has great gelation and binding properties, which help efficiently enhance the product’s structure and boost its elasticity and hardness. This contributes to creating denser products that feel meatier when consumed. This is particularly beneficial when forming frozen meat skewers, pork meatballs, minced meats, and related products.
Utilizing Emulsification Properties to Address Water and Oil Separation
This problem appears to be very frequent in products from meat, such as when the meat is cooked, resulting in the separation of water and oil. Soy protein has unique functional properties of emulsification, which form a stable network between the fats and too much water, hence no separation during the cooking process.
Due to its virtually infinite functional properties, soy proteins play an essential part in a host of processed meat products. Different types of soy protein incorporated in meat products reflect their overall flavor as well as the structure construction. However, it is important that the proteins have to be used in the proper proportions. Just like in any food formulation or ingredient, if to the proteins extracted from soy, the amounts are increased or reduced to extremes these downside: Ungodly and uneven flavors and aromas, the protein is capable of not masking objectionable odors, the texture of the protein could be too crumbly or too tough and protein exhibits a very assertive, bean-like taste and so on.
Conclusion
The combined functional benefits make proteins sourced from soy an essential additive in meat products. Due to the high employment of soy commodities, it is important to obtain soy protein powders, isolates and concentrates, and other related products from rightful suppliers. Mondstar offers you solutions for soy protein.
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