Effect of Different Cooking Techniques on Microbial, Sensory and Colour Characteristics of Fish Pâté: Comparison of Ohmic and Traditional Cooking Techniques

Abstract

The objective of this research was to investigate the quality characteristics of fish pâté produced using different cooking techniques. For this purpose, the fish pâté was cooked by ohmic and traditional (water bath) cooking techniques to same target temperature (78 °C). The time required for pasteurization of ohmic cooked fish pâté (OC) was calculated as 473.82 minutes, which is shorter than the pasteurization value of traditionally cooked fish pâté (TC) calculated as 2696.23 min. However, total bacteria count (TBC) and total yeast and mold count (TYM) of OC and TC were not (p>0.05) statistically different. Although the L* and a* colour values of OC and TC were not significantly different (p>0.05), these colour values were significantly different (p<0.05) from the values of uncooked fish pâté (UC). After cooking process, the sensory score of OC was higher than the sensory score of TC according to appearance, flavour and odour score. On the other hand, the deterioration of OC was occurred faster than the deterioration of TC during cold storage (4°C) of fish pâtés. OC was evaluated “unacceptable” at the 20 th day of storage when TC was evaluated as “acceptable” on the same day of storage. In the view of such information, it has been determined that further optimization studies are needed in order to use the ohmic cooking technique, which has a unique heating mechanism, in the cooking of fish pâté.