Measurement of swelling pressure in pork meat brining

This paper describes a new controlled swelling device fabricated to measure the corresponding swelling pressure of meat immersed in brine throughout salting. To set up the proposed device, swelling in pieces of pork meat immersed in a 5% (w/w) NaCl brine was studied. It is well known and described in literature the influence of NaCl on the water holding capacity of meat. The increase in that value has been related with the existence of swelling pressures in the protein matrix.The obtained results indicated that the developed device provides swelling pressure values which are in accordance with the measured changes in composition, weight and height of non-constrained samples.