Effect of Thawing on Frozen Meat Quality: A comprehensive Review

Meat and meat products provide essential nutrients such as protein, fat, vitamins and minerals by making an important role in dietary intake. The overall eating quality of meat and meat products is affected by characteristics like taste, texture, juiciness, appearance and odor. Texture is deemed to be most important characteristic of all. Nowadays in busy life meat in bulk quantity is purchased for further usage that required thawing i.e. a loss of nutrition as well. The quality of frozen foods is main concern in many cases due to less attention is paid towards thawing process. However, thawing is significant cause of quality damage in freezing process due to many reasons. Proper precautionary measures must be practiced during meat thawing process to avoid microbial spoilage, which includes temperature below danger zone and reduced thawing time. Improper thawing technique will lead to activation and multiplication of already residing dormant micro flora on meat surface. The purpose of this review is to describe the effects of thawing on the physicochemical quality parameters of meat.