Efecto de la transglutaminasa microbiana sobre las propiedades mecánicas de geles de carne de jaiba cocida

Cooked crabmeat has been reported to produce weak gels after a three-cycle washing process. Adding microbial transglutaminase (MTGase) can improve the mechanical properties in these gels. The objective of this work was to determine if a single washing treatment combined with adding of MTGase could improve the mechanical properties of crabmeat gels. Blue crabs ( Callinectes sapidus ) were obtained from Laguna Madre Tamaulipas, Mexico and cooked at 120 °C for 20 min to separate the cooked meat from the shell. Cooked meat was homogenized in a cutter with 0 (control), 0.5 % and 1 % MTGase and stuffed in stainless steel tubes and incubated at 40 °C for 30 min before cooking at 90 °C for 15 min. Gels were also obtained by cooking directly at 90 °C for 15 min without previous incubation. Changes on the texture profile analysis were evaluated. The single washing step was enough to improve the mechanical properties of the crabmeat gels and MTGase improved such properties especially when gels were incubated to 40 oC previous to their cooking at 90 oC. The results obtained indicate that it is feasible to produce restructured products from cooked crabmeat by reducing the number of washing cycles if MTGase is added. Archive XML (SciELO)