Meat Snacks—Ancient Product, New Interest

By Scott Hegenbart, Managing Editor Food Ingredients Online

For all of the new snack foods on the market, old favorites such as beef jerky continue to enjoy popularity. Based largely on salting and drying techniques that date back to before the middle ages, meat snacks have enjoyed double-digit category growth from 1993 to 1996, according to the Snack Food Assoc. (Alexandria, VA). Although this plateaued in 1997, sales still climbed to $896.1 million.

But is this popularity truly for the product our ancestors knew? Not likely since early beef jerky has been described as looking like strips of thick cardboard and being just about as easy to chew. Fortunately for the jaws of today's consumer, modern formulation techniques has helped meat snacks evolve into a wide variety of much more palatable forms.

Old ideas, new methods
Nearly all meat snacks can trace their history to traditional charqui and pemmican.Charqui—from which the word, "jerky" is derived—was made by slicing boned and defatted meat to about a quarter-inch thickness. These slices were then dipped in brine or rubbed with salt and rolled up into animal hides for 10 to 12 hours to ensure that the meat absorbed the salt and released some of its juices. Finally, the strips were hung in the sun to dry. Pemmican started out with thinly sliced, dried, lean meat which were shredded by pounding and mixed one-to-one with melted fat. To this, some marrow from the animal bones and wild cherries or cranberries (depending on the location) were mixed. In addition to flavor, the fruit also contributed a preserving effect that modern researchers are reexploring in this related article. (See a related article)

Today, jerky making has been refined, but is fundamentally the same. The slices are dipped, sprayed or tumbled with a marinade then smoked in a smokehouse and/or dried in a tunnel dryer. Rather than using whole slices of meat—which is labor-intensive and, therefore, expensive—many processors form jerky from comminuted meat. Aficionados do, however, consider whole-slice jerky to be a premium product because of the superior texture.

"Slicing is not used too much by the big manufacturers because it's too expensive," says Nora Piento, senior food technologist, Heller Seasonings, Bedford Park, IL. "Most of it is chunked and formed, but not to the point of being emulsified as in hot dog production."

Comminuted jerky and snack sticks both are made through similar processes. About the only real differences are the shape into which each is formed and the final moisture level to which each is dried.

The meat is first put into an emulsifying blender along with the dry ingredients and water, if any is required. The resulting mass may then pass through a sheeter or extruder to be formed into strips, or into a stuffer to be put into casings. Finally, the pieces are smoked and/or dried as in traditional production methods.

Drying down to preserve
To properly dry meat snacks, food technologists must achieve a moisture level that meets requirements for both product safety and quality. Higher moisture levels give higher product yields and a desirable soft, chewy texture. They also, however, make the product more prone to color fading and microbial growth.

To find the right combination of preservation and organoleptic enjoyment, meat snacks follow the principles that guide the development of intermediate moisture foods. (IMF). Before drying the product to the desired moisture level, meat snacks must be designed with the correct pH and water activity to counteract the higher moisture levels that increase palatability. Most contemporary meat snacks have a moisture content pretty close to about 5%, but some of the newer "chewy steak" products may have more. Water activities generally range from about 0.6 to 0.8. For all meat snacks, the pH will be around 3.5 and usually no higher than 4.0.

Meaty ingredient matters
Achieving the correct pH and water activity of a meat snack often requires several other ingredients besides the meat. In general, these are added via the marinade to whole-muscle products and blended with the meat for comminuted products.

•Meat.The most popular jerky and meat snacks are made from beef. Other meats, such as ham, pork, buffalo, ostrich, etc., may be used successfully. For whole muscle products, lean skeletal meat such as beef round is usually the ingredient of choice.

"You have to have lean meat that has no tendons," says Romeo Toledo, PhD., professor of food science, University of Georgia, Athens. "Because the fat will leave stripes on the jerky, trimming must be more involved."

For comminuted products, one of the most important properties of the meat used is its binding characteristics. Without adequate protein-to-protein interaction, the pieces won't hold together to produce the desired texture, nor will they stabilize the fat and bind moisture. Consequently, the larger portion of the meat used also should be lean skeletal muscle since this tends to have a higher quantity of these necessary proteins.

Still, to reduce costs, comminuted products can and do often contain trimmings and fat. In the higher-moisture meat snacks, the fat contributes to a softer, "moister" texture. In addition, the fat helps the meat to bind.

•Salt has three functions in meat snacks. First, it contributes flavor. Next, in comminuted products, salt is necessary in order to solubilize the salt-soluble proteins for proper binding. Third, salt extends shelflife by contributing solids that lower water activity and inhibit microbial growth.

Typically, the optimum salt level still boils down to taste. Usually about 6% on the dried product is optimum. This means that the salt level initially may only need to be about 2% prior to drying because of the concentration effects of moisture loss.

•Sweeteners often are used because their sweet taste helps to mellow the strong bite of the high salt levels. They also increase solids to help control water activity at higher moisture levels. Monosaccharides have the greatest potential for lowering water activity. Using higher dextrose equivalent (DE) corn sweeteners, therefore, will have a greater water activity lowering effect.

If the product is going to be fermented, added sugars are necessary as food for the bacteria in the starter culture. Since these must be fermentable sugars, monosaccharides again are the sweetener of choice. Once more, the advantage goes to the higher DE corn sweeteners which contain more monosaccharides.

•Acidulants help lower the pH to preserve the product. The more common acidulants are either acetic, or citric acid. Because the acid might interfere with salt's function in protein binding, the product formulator may choose to use an acidulant that has been encapsulated.

•Starter Culture. Instead of acidulants added to the formula, some products are allowed to ferment with lactic acid bacteria to obtain the proper pH. This is done both to ensure shelflife, and to contribute flavor.

Lactic acid bacteria are used in snack stick production much the same way as they are in making summer sausage. In fact, most snack sticks are made much like summer sausage, except they're dried to a lower moisture level.

•Seasonings are necessary to give a meat snack its signature flavor profile. The seasonings included are pretty much up to the goals of the project and the formulator's creativity. Consumers do, however, expect to experience certain flavors.

"In general, onion, garlic, black pepper and red pepper are pretty standard," says Piento. "Then each manufacturer will add other seasonings to make their product unique."

Liquid flavors also can be used in these snacks. They might be added to the marinade, to the meat emulsion, or plated onto dry ingredients and blended with the seasonings.

•Preservatives. Between the low moisture level and high salt content, most meat snacks already are well preserved. Some snack sticks may contain nitrites, but it's often for the cured color and flavor they generate and not a shelflife requirement. Some products, like the newer "beef steak" jerkys have a softer texture created by increasing the moisture and/or water activity levels. These often may contain a preservative such as sodium benzoate or sodium erythorbate to assure microbial stability.

Processing and quality
How a meat snack is processed directly affects the finished product quality. If, for example, a comminuted product is ground too finely, the emulsion may break causing the product to be gritty. Another possibility is for the mass to become too tightly bound so the finished jerky or snack is chewy and tough. On the other hand, the meat can be ground too coarsely so that it will not bind.

Temperature during mixing must be monitored to assure proper binding. The optimum is to keep the product at 30°F during mixing and forming.

"If it gets too warm, you won't get the bind that you need or the emulsion will break," says Piento. "On the other hand, I've actually seen somebody freeze up their mixer with product that is too cool"

Controlling the temperature typically doesn't require investing in jacketed equipment. Since most products contain a small amount of water, some of this may be replaced with ice to keep the temperature down.

Cutting whole muscle jerky must be done carefully with little mechanical action. Otherwise the meat can tatter and break apart. Even how the marinade is added can affect product quality.

"If you tumble the meat, you have to be very gentle," says Toledo. "Most companies choose to soak it, that way you don't run the risk of breaking the pieces up." While drying, temperature control again becomes critical. If temperatures are too high, it can affect both the appearance and eating quality of both whole-muscle and comminuted products.

"If it's too high, you cook the pieces too fast," says Toledo. "When protein is dried after it's cooked, it looks terrible. It looks gray and doesn't get that nice mahogany color. It won't have a nice gloss."

For comminuted products, in particular, the initial cooking stages take place while the product is rather soft. If the temperature gets too high, the fat will tend to separate and give a messy product with an oily coating on the outside.

Slow drying also is required to obtain the proper eating texture. By drying the product while the protein is still raw, crumbliness can be avoided. Typical drying temperatures will be around 130°F.

"We initially heat our smokehouse to about 140° to 180°F," says Toledo. "We stop the heat when the product''s internal temperature is 168°F—which usually takes about two and a half hours— then we just let it go until the product dries."

Meat snacks have certainly come a long way from a staple of the saddle bag to value-added snack food. Thanks to new formulas and optimized processing techniques, hard-to-eat protein chips that must be endured have now become soft and chewy morsels that can be enjoyed.