Impact of Cooking Conditions on Proximate Composition and Textural Properties of Chicken Breast Meat

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of cooking conditions on the proximate composition and textural properties (cohesiveness and chewiness) of chicken breast meat.  Eight packs of industrial skinless chicken breast meat were cooked by air frying (AF), baking (BK), deep fat frying (DF) and grilling (GR) at 170, 180 and 190oC for 0, 4, 8, 12 and 16 min. The chicken breast packs were frozen and sliced into dimensions, thawed, cooked and analysed by a two way analysis of variance. The results revealed that cooking methods significantly (p < 0.05) decreased moisture and protein contents from 75.14 to 58.25% and 89.17 to 82.98%, but increased fat content from 4.26 to 7.78%, ash content from 1.95 to 2.39%, carbohydrate content from 4.63 to 6.95%, cohesiveness content from 0.40 to 0.52 and chewiness value from 3.63 to 6.05 kg. An increases in cooking temperatures and times decreased  moisture  content  from  60.58 to % 56.34% and 75.14 to 47.40% and protein content from 83.77 to 82.11% and 89.17 to 79.45%. Similarly, increases in cooking temperatures and times significantly (p < 0.05) increased fat content from 7.00 to 8.44% and 4.26 to 10.12%, ash content from 2.15% to 2.59% and 1.95 to 2.67%. This study showed that increases in cooking temperatures decreased non-significantly (p > 0.05) carbohydrate content from 7.02 to 6.92%, but increases in cooking times increased carbohydrate content from 4.63 to 7.76%. An increases in cooking temperatures and times increased cohesiveness content from 0.50 to 0.54 and 0.40 to 0.63, chewiness value from 5.50 to 6.77 kg and 3.63 to 8.54 kg, respectively. There were no significant differences (p > 0.05) in chewiness values of samples cooked by AF and GR methods. The best cooking method/ temperature / time for low nutrient losses was BK, 170oC and 4 min.