Effect of repeated marination and cooking on quality of marinades

Chinese traditional marinated meat is very popular among consumers due re-useable marinades. Numerous taste-enhancing, active compounds are enriched by repeated use, which provides the marinade a characteristic strong flavor that delivers a unique flavor to marinated foods. Using chicken drumsticks from white-feathered broilers, changes in nutrients such as proteins, free amino acids, flavor nucleotides, and equivalent umami concentration (EUC), as well as harmful substances such as heterocyclic amines were analyzed in the marinades used for Chinese traditional marination with different marinating time. The results showed that compared with the control group (unused marinade), the marinade used for the 9th time showed protein content increased to 3.86% from 0.09%, total free amino acid content increased to 601.92 from 68.57 mg/100 g, flavor nucleotides increased to 22.97 from 0.78 mg/100 g, and EUC value increased to 1.32 from 0.068 g MSG/100 g; whereas heterocyclic amine content increased as well, to 28.64 from 12.29 ng/g. Therefore, content of both nutrients and harmful substances were found to continuously rise, with each marination use. ©, 2015, South China University of Technology. All right reserved.