Quality enhancement of canned sardine (Sardina pilchardus) by a preliminary slurry ice chilling treatment

The slurry ice technology has shown wide advantages when employed as a chilling method for marine species instead of the traditional flake ice storage. In the present work, the use of slurry ice was evaluated for the first time as a technological treatment prior to the canning processing of fish. Thus, sardine (Sardina pilchardus) specimens were stored in slurry ice for 2 and 5 days and then taken and subjected to canning. Quality assessment of the canned product was performed on the fish muscle and on the coating oil, in comparison with that of a parallel control batch previously stored in flake ice. Analyses included composition (water, lipid and NaCl contents), physical properties (firmness, cohesivity), volatile amine formation (total and trimethylamine), lipid oxidation development (anisidine value, polyene index, alpha-tocopherol content and Rancimat oxidative stability) and interaction compounds formation (fluorescence assessment). An inhibition of lipid oxidation development (P < 0.05) was obtained in canned sardine when applying slurry ice as a preliminary chilling storage system. The present work opens the way to the use of slurry ice instead of flake ice as a preliminary treatment of fish material prior to the canning process