Determination of five alcohol compounds in fermented Korean foods via simple liquid extraction with dimethyl-sulfoxide followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for Halal food certification

•Establishment of rapid and simple pretreatment method for 5 alcohol compounds.•Establishment of detection method for 5 alcohols using GC/MSD.•Established method was validated through precision, accuracy and linearity.•Application test for Korean fermented foods such as Gochujang and soybean sauce.

An analytical method for the determination of five alcohols (methanol, ethanol, n-propanol, n-butanol and n-pentanol) in fermented Korean foods using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) was validated in terms of precision, accuracy, sensitivity and linearity. GC/MS separation was performed on a silica-based INNOWAX column (film thickness 0.25 μm, i.d. 250 μm, length 30 m) coated with polyethylene glycol and a mass selective detector set to determine specific selected ions for each alcohol. The limits of detection and quantification of the GC/MS analyses ranged from 0.25 to 1.16 mg/kg. Intra-day and inter-day RSDs for individual alcohol compounds were below 7%, and calibration curves exhibited good linearity (r = 0.999) within the tested ranges. Recovery values ranged from 90.79 to 101.50%. These results suggest that the analytical method described in this study could be used to determine the concentrations of five alcohols in a variety of fermented Korean foods such as Gochujang, Kimchi and soybean sauce (paste, solid and liquid sample) for Halal food certification.