Salting operational diagrams for chicken breast cuts: Hydration–dehydration

Water and salt transport during osmotic treatment of chicken breast cuts, immersed in salt solutions with different sodium chloride concentrations, were investigated. Salt and water transport was studied empirically by determining water gain (WG), salt gain (SG) and total weight increment (WI) of samples immersed in saline solutions with different concentrations, at 5 °C. It was possible to verify the effect of NaCl solution concentration (Cs) on the direction of the resulting water flow and to quantify water and salt transfer. For values of Cs up to 10% it was verified that the meat samples gained water, while for processes with Cs between 15% and 20%, samples lost water. Linear behaviors of WG and SG parameters with Cs (5–20%) were observed for each process time. Because of the linearity of WG versus Cs it was possible to estimate the value of Cs that delimited hydration from dehydration process in chicken breast cuts, for each immersion time. The results obtained in this work showed that Cs and immersion time variables can be manipulated to obtain a product with desired NaCl concentration and moisture. An original Salting operational diagram was proposed to help simulate the different values of Cs and immersion time to be used to achieve given final product moisture and salt concentration.