Effects of ohmic heating for pre-cooking of meatballs on some quality and safety attributes

- Ohmic precooking resulted safe meatballs on toxicological and mutagenic aspects.
- PAH formation in ohmically precooked meatballs was found below the acceptable limits.
- Ohmic precooking eliminated all pathogens on meatballs, except Listeria monocytogenes.
- High cooking yield was obtained with ohmic precooking.
- Ohmic precooking provided visually good meatballs, in terms of sensory quality.

Effectiveness of ohmic treatment on some quality attributes of semi-cooked meatballs was studied. Meatball samples were semi-cooked by 15.26 V/cm voltage gradient and 0 s holding time at 75 °C. Although ohmic cooking significantly reduced the numbers of total mesophilic aerobic bacteria, mould-yeast, Staphylococcus aureus and completely eliminated Salmonella spp. from meatball samples (p < 0.05), it was not found efficient to inactivate all Listeria monocytogenes cells. Ohmic semi-cooking process was resulted at higher cooking yields, which were supported by high fat and moisture retention values in meatball samples. Metal levels (iron, chromium, nickel and manganese) of ohmically semi-cooked meatball samples were found below the upper level of dietary exposure levels. Ohmic cooking procedure was found to be safe in terms of PAH formation and mutagenic activity. Sensory evaluation showed that the overall acceptance of the semi-cooked meatball samples were good. These results demonstrate considerable potential for the application of ohmic process for semi-cooking of meatballs.