Effect of cooking bag and netting packaging on the quality of pork ham during water cooking

As a preliminary test for combining water cooking with vacuum cooling in soup of pork ham, three package treatments were designed to study the effect of cooking bag and netting on the quality of water cooked ham, i.e. ham cooked with a cooking bag and without a cooking bag (single netting and double netting). For treatments without a cooking bag, the results indicated that there was no significant superiority of ham cooked with double netting compared with ham cooked with single netting on the processing efficiency and quality characteristics. Although the hams cooked with a bag performed better in some chemical retentions and pigment, the water contents were significantly lower than those hams cooked in single netting (P < 0.05), and there was a higher shrinkage tendency compared with the hams cooked without a bag. For the processing characteristics and texture properties of pork ham, there were no significant differences observed among the treatments with and without a cooking bag in terms of the combined effect of cooking and cooling (P > 0.05). By considering the safety, convenience, cost, and the recovery effect on the quality changes of ham during vacuum cooling in soup, cooking with single netting is a better choice for future research. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.