EFFECT OF MARINATION ON PHYSICO-CHEMICAL AND SENSORY QUALITY OF

CHICKEN CURRY.

Dr. Deogade Ashish Haridas

Department of Livestock Products Technology,
College of Veterinary and Animal Science, Parbhani-431402 (MS)

Abstract
The effect of marinating mixture (Potassium sorbate 0.05% and water 2.5%) with

incorporation of acidulants viz; citric acid, lactic acid and vinegar (0.2% each) was assessed on

sensory quality of chicken curry. Fresh chicken chunks were kept in marinating mixture for 20 h

at 4+10C and chicken curry was prepared using selected spice preparation. The study indicated

that, the sensory scores were maximum for all the sensory attributes of chicken curry prepared

by using citric acid in a marination mixture as compared to that of lactic acid and vinegar. The

effect of marination time (12, 15 and 18 h) was also studied during the experiment and assessed

on the basis of physico-chemical and sensory attributes. 18 h treated product recorded

significantly lowest pH than 12 and 15 h marination and both do not differed significantly.

Marination time treatments had no any significant effect on moisture, protein and fat content.

Studies on sensory quality revealed that juiciness, texture and overall palatability scores of

chicken curry improved in 12 h marinated product and texture scores was significantly higher

whereas appearance and flavour scores were recorded higher for 15 h marinated product as

compared to 18 h. However, 12 h marination time exhibited higher score for the sensory

attributes indicating that 12 h as marination time and citric acid as acidulant was more suitable

for improving the quality of chicken curry.

Keywords: Marinating mixtures, marination time, chicken curry, sensory quality

* Corresponding author, Prof. & Head, Dept. of LPT, COVAS, Parbhani- 431 402 (M.S.)
@ Part of M.V.Sc. thesis by the first author.

 Goat and poultry meat are consumed on large scale in our country but poultry meat is

preferred over other meat. In last two decades, the market share of poultry meat has

encouragingly gone up from 4 to 13 per cent and in the coming years, market is expected to

show an upward trend in order to meet the demand of increasing human population. It is

estimated that more than 30 % of urban population consumes 70 - 75% of poultry meat products

(Singh, 2004). Amongst the edible meat, broiler is low in fat but high in protein content

(Narayankhedkar, 2004). With changing lifestyle of urban community, the demand for

wholesome and safe ready-to-eat meat products had been going up. To provide this now a days,

fast food parlors and restaurant are coming up rapidly throughout the country.

Chicken curry is one of the chicken preparations prepared through out the country and

consumed afresh. (Singh et al.,1995). But, being perishable it requires preservation at an early

stage of processing so as to prolong its shelf life. Despite, availability of several methods for

preservation of meat and meat products, there is a strong needs to use cost effective and efficient

technology to maintain freshness, stability and safety. Hurdle technology is one such attempt that

can be exploites to promote microbial stability of food products. Various acidulants are used in

marinating mixture as one of the hurdles, which are artificially and deliberately added to lower

the pH of food. Although there are many lipophilic organic acids like citric, acetic and lactic acid

are more commonly used, that inhibit the microbial growth and control spoilage thereby extend

the shelf life of meat (Corlett and Brown, 1980; Gordon and Bryan, 1992 and Ziauddin et al.,

1993). Also various marination times are used by researches such as Das and Radhakrishna

(2001) 20 h for mutton chunks, Das (2002) and Das and Jayaraman (2003) 18 h for chicken

pulav and chicken chunks respectively, Grover et. al.,(2004) used 12 h marination time for

 chicken gizzard pickle and Rathod (2005) developed chicken curry by using marination time 20

h.

Marination is recognized as a means of enhancing the quality and versatility of meats.

However, commercial marinades often have little influence on the tenderness of meat but instead

improve palatability by enhancing or complementing the flavour of meat (Gault, 1991 and Rao,

1989). In the present study the effect of citric acid, lactic acid and vinegar marinade on sensory

quality and marination time 12, 15 and 18 h on physicochemical and sensory attributes of

chicken curry was investigated.

Materials and Methods:

Fresh chicken meat was washed with clean water and dipped in 2% acetic acid solution for 3

min. to reduce surface contamination and again washed with clean water. After deboning, it was

cut into small pieces of approximately 2cm x 1cm x 1cm size and used for marination.

The effect of three marinating mixtures (Table 1) using 20 h marination time at 4+1oC on

sensory quality of the product was assessed.

Table 1. Composition of ingredient of different marinating mixtures.

Percent on fresh meat weight basis

Sr. No. Ingredients
Mixture 1 (T1) Mixture 2 (T2) Mixture 3 (T3)
1 Citric acid 0.2 -- --
2 Lactic acid -- 0.2 --
3 Vinegar -- -- 0.2
4 Potassium sorbate 0.05 0.05 0.05
5 Water 2.5 2.5 2.5

Chicken curry was prepared using selected spice ingredients (Table 2) and condiments

(Table 3) as shown in flow chart.

Table 2. Standardized Spice mixture (curry ingredients) for preparation of chicken curry

Sr. No. Ingredients Percent (On fresh meat

weight)
1 Dalda 5.60
2 Sunflower oil 10.00
3 Chilli powder 1.10
4 Turmeric powder 0.45
5 Coriander powder 0.55
6 Cumin powder 0.55
7 Black pepper powder 0.12
8 Cinnamon powder 0.17
9 Clove powder 0.11
10 Large cardamom powder 0.17
11 Small cardamom powder 0.17
12 Common salt 2.0
13 Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) 0.01

Table 3. Condiments (curry ingredients) used for preparation chicken curry.

Ingredients Percent (On fresh meat
Sr. No. weight)
1 Onion 28.00
2 Ginger 4.20
3 Garlic 4.30

Table 4. Effect of Marination mixtures on sensory quality of ready to eat chicken curry

Sensory attributes
Marination
mixture (0.2%) Overall
Appearance Flavour Juiciness Texture
Palatability
Citric acid 7.46+0.14 7.50a+0.10 7.42a+0.14 7.50a+0.10 7.50a+0.10
Lactic acid 7.46+0.14 7.17ab+0.15 7.17a+0.15 7.04a+0.17 7.04a+0.18
Vinegar 7.25+0.18 7.00b+0.17 6.17b+0.31 6.50b+0.24 6.38b+0.22

SE + 0.16 0.15 0.22 0.19 0.19

CD NS 0.40 0.60 0.52 0.52

 Table 5. Effect of Marination Time on sensory quality of ready to eat chicken curry

Sensory attributes
Marination time
(h) Overall
Appearance Flavour Juiciness Texture
Palatability
12 7.29+ 0.13 7.00a+0.13 7.46+0.12 7.50a+0.10 7.37+0.13
15 7.33+0.13 7.50b+0.10 7.25+0.11 7.42a+0.10 7.33+0.13
18 7.12+0.16 7.33ab+0.13 7.33+0.13 6.96b+0.16 7.12+0.16

SE + 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.13 0.14

CD NS 0.39 NS 0.35 NS

Table 6. Effect of Marination Time on Physico-chemical parameters of ready to eat chicken

curry

Physico-chemical parameters
Marination time
(h) pH Moisture % Fat % Protein %

12 5.51a+0.04 39.10+0.14 21.59+0.08 24.11+0.06

15 5.45a+0.03 38.90+0.27 21.92+0.08 24.29+0.05
18 5.33b+0.02 38.49+0.19 21.78+0.10 24.20+0.08

SE + 0.033 0.237 0.100 0.069

CD 0.105 NS NS NS
Means+ S.E with different superscripts in a column differ significantly (P<0.05).
NS = Non-significant.

 Flow diagram for preparation of Hurdle treated Chicken curry

.
Fresh chicken carcass

Washing

Dipping in 2% acetic acid solution for 3 min.

Washing with potable water

Deboning and cutting into small pieces

Marinating at 4+1oC for 20 hrs.

Cooking (under steam for 10 min.)

Dehydration at 600C for 2 hours

Addition of hot spice mixture

Curry preparation

Served hot to sensory panel

During second phase of experiment selected marination mixture (on the basis of sensory

evaluation) was tried for three different marination time (12, 15 and 18 h) and assessed on

physico-chemical and sensory attributes.

Analytical procedures
The pH of sample was recorded using glass with combined electrode using digital pH

meter (Model LI 120, ELICO Pvt. Ltd., Hydrabad). Moisture, protein and fat content of the

product were determined by using the standard method of AOAC (1995).

Sensory evaluation
Sensory quality of ready to eat chicken curry was judged by a semitrained panel for

sensory attributes viz. appearance, flavour, texture, juiciness and overall palatability using 8

point descriptive scale (Keeton, 1983), where ‘8’ denoted extremely desirable and ‘1’ denoted

extremely undesirable.

Statistical Analysis
The data obtained during the study was subjected to statistical analysis using Completely

Randomized Design (CRD) and Factorial CRD (Snedecor and Cochran, 1989).

Results and Discussion:

Effect of marinating mixtures on sensory attributes of chicken curry

The effect of three marinating mixtures containing citric acid (T1), lactic acid (T2) and

vinegar (T3) on sensory attributes of chicken curry are presented in Table 4.

It is observed that the sensory scores were maximum for all the sensory attributes of

chicken curry prepared by using citric acid in a marination mixture as compared to that of lactic

acid and vinegar. However, non-significant differences were recorded in sensory scores of

appearance, flavour and juiciness of the product treated with citric acid as well as lactic acid. The

results are in agreement with the findings of Das (2002) who reported higher scores for colour

and appearance in freshly hurdle processed chevon treated with 0.2 % citric acid over other

marinade treatments. Rathod (2005) also reported higher scores for all the sensory attributes for

ready to eat chicken curry using citric acid.

Sensory score for flavour in respected of citric acid and lactic acid treated chicken curry

showed non significant variations indicating that the citric acid in a marinating mixture did not

impair the meat flavour as against lactic acid and vinegar though the later are generally

 recognised as safe (GRAS) for use as acidulant and flavouring agent (Davidson and Juneja,

1990).

Variations in sensory scores for juiciness, texture and overall palatability were non

significant for chicken marinated with citric acid and lactic acid. However, vinegar treated

chicken curry exhibited significantly low scores for all the attributes indicating its unsuitability

in a marinade treatment for preparation of ready to eat chicken curry.

Thus it can be concluded that the marination mixture having citric acid was found to be

superior over other mixtures and selected for subsequent study.

Effect of marination time on quality of chicken curry

Sensory attributes:

The data on the effect of three marinating durations on sensory quality of hurdle

processed chicken curry are presented in Table 5.

Non-significant variations were observed in appearance, juiciness and overall palatability

scores of chicken curry indicating that marinating time used in the present study had no

appreciable effect on these attributes. It is observed that the sensory scores of texture differed

significantly when subjected to different marinating durations. But the scores with 12 and 15 h

marination time were at par indicating that both the marinating duration are superior over 18 h.

Subsequent increase in marinating time to 18 h significantly reduced the score to 6.96. On the

contrary, there was significant enhancement in flavour score in ready to eat chicken curry

prepared by employing 15 h marinating time. However, the differences were observed to be non

significant even after extending the marination time to 18 h. Further, the flavour scores were

statistically at par for chicken curry when subjected to 12 and 18 h marination.

 The overall palatability scores of chicken curry did not differ significantly between

treatments and were observed as 7.37, 7.33 and 7.12 for 12, 15 and 18 h respectively. Wide

variations in marination time for preparation of meat curry were reported by several workers.

Das and Radhakrishna (2001) used 20 h marination time at 50C for preparation of mutton chunks,

while Das (2002) and Das and Jayaraman (2003) reported marination time 18 h at 5+20C for

preparation of chicken pulav and chicken chunks respectively. Grover (2004) used 12 h

marination time at 4+20C for chicken gizzard pickle, while Rathod (2005) developed chicken

curry by using marination time 20 h at 4+10C.

Physico-chemical properties:

Physico-chemical properties of chicken curry as influenced by different marinating

durations are given in Table 6.

Significant differences were observed in pH of the product when marinated at different

durations. However, pH of chicken curry marinated at 12 and 15 h did not reveal significant

variations. With increase in marination time to 18 h, pH declined significantly from 5.45 to 5.33.

pH is one of the most important parameters which influences other quality characteristics of meat

such as emulsifying capacity, emulsion stability, cooking loss, juiciness and texture. Increase in

pH was found to increase the water holding capacity and fat emulsification leading to retention

of more water when treated (Baker et al., 1970). This might be the possible reason for higher

sensory scores of texture and juiciness in the product marinated for 12 h. It is observed that fat,

protein and moisture content of the product was not affected significantly by various marination

time used in the present study.

 In view of the observations on various physico-chemical as well as sensory attributes of

chicken curry subjected to different marination duration, it can be concluded that 12 h marination

time was found to be superior over 15 and 18 h.

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