Stabilisation of meat suspensions by organogelation: a rheological approach

The stabilisation of suspensions is a relevant issue in several industrial applications and particularly in the food area. Water-based systems are widely studied and they are commonly stabilised by the addition of hydrocolloids (such as polysaccharides or proteins) whereas for oil-based products less information is available. In this paper oil-based meat suspensions are investigated, and the addition of organogelators is proposed as a potential solution to the stability problems currently observed in some practical applications. Investigated suspensions are obtained by grinding a meat phase with vegetable oil blends, thus yielding products typically used in the traditional southern Italian diet as spreadable spicy sauces or as oil-based dressings for pizzas. The effects of proposed additives were investigated by destabilising the modified suspensions (by centrifugation) and comparing their rheological characteristics and oil loss to those of the unmodified systems (i.e. without addition of stabilisers). It was observed that both additives exert a stabilising action, even if one of them (monoglycerides of fatty acids) is more effective than the other, even at a very low concentration. The adopted rheological approach has proved very useful to determine the type and amount of the proper organogelator to be used as an oil suspension stabiliser.