Rheological properties of selected fish paste at selected temperature pertaining to shaping of surimi-based products

The rheological properties of fish meat pastes were investigated by dynamic rheological measurement in a range of 5–30 °C, in order to establish the optimum temperatures for shaping. Storage moduli (G′) on temperature sweep analysis for walleye pollack, white croaker and threadfin bream meat pastes were considerably higher than loss moduli (G″) and showed maximum at 20, 27 and 28 °C, respectively. Frequency sweep analysis and SDS–PAGE revealed that all meat pastes hardly formed suwari gels upon heating until 30 °C. The maximal degrees of recovered G′ were observed at 20 and 30 °C for walleye pollack and threadfin bream meat pastes by interval thixotropy analysis, respectively. On the other hand, the G′ recovery of white croaker meat paste was almost constant in a range of 5–25 °C, but markedly decreased at 30 °C. These results suggest that the rheological properties of walleye pollack, white croaker and threadfin bream meat pastes are species-specific and their optimum temperatures for shaping are at 20 °C, below 25 °C and at 28 °C, respectively.