Effect of cooking procedure on the morphometric characteristics of the muscle fibre and quality of buffalo meat

To investigate the structural and qualitative variations induced by two cooking procedures (electric griddle and microwave oven) 6 buffalo males of 17 months of age were slaughtered. On Caput longum tricipitis brachii (CLoTB), Gluteobiceps (Gb), Longissimus dorsi (LD), Semimembranosus (Sm) and Semitendinosus (St)muscles morphometric characteristics of FG, FOG and SO fiber types and some quality indicators (rheological and colour characteristics) were measured. The results showed that Semitendinosus has a higher percentage of FG and FOG fibers, CLoTB has an even distribution of the three fibre types, whereas the LD has a high percentage of FG. With both cooking procedure the cross sectional area (CSA) value of CLoTB, LD and Sm decreases by about 60% whereas cooking on electric griddle causes a decrease in CSA value of St and Gb muscles of an additional 10 and 6% respectively, compared to microwave cooking. Cooking determined a levelling of the value of the qualitative characteristics of the meat: the significant differences found for the raw meat as regards toughness, shear force and chewiness become not significant with both cooking procedure