• Journal of Life Science
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.1280-1289
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• 2015

Fish-meat gel is being produced mostly relying on surimi and raw materials imported from Southeast Asia and North America and present in small amount in local markets. In this study, common farmed local fishes were examined as stable and reliable sources of surimi for fish-meat gel production. For testing, five main farmed-fish of Korea, namely; Bastard halibut (Paralichthys olivaceus), Red sea bream (Pagrus major), Korean rockfish (Sebastes schlegeli), Common mulle (Mugil cephalus), and Finespotted flounder (Pleuronichthys cornutus) were used following a traditional washing process. The quality of the surimi was determined by the values of water content, whiteness index, gel strength and impurity. Accordingly, fish-meat gel and surimi quality experiments were carried out by measuring compressive and texture properties, expressible moisture content, Hunter color scale values and SDS-page protein patterns. Also gel characteristics were compared with that of FA and RA grade surimi (Alaska Pollock). Fish-meat gels were prepared by salt mincing the farmed-fish surimi with NaCl (2% w/w) and moisture adjustment to 84% by ice water adding. Prepared fish-meat paste was filled into 20-25 cm long polyvinylidene chloride casings and heated at 90℃ for 20 min. The whiteness values of fish-meat gels produced from surimi were increased by using farmed-fish and became comparable to that of FA Alaska Pollock gel. Among all tested farmed-fish, P. olivaceus and P. major exhibited better properties than RA Alaska Pollock and similar properties to FA Alaska Pollock. Therefore, current data suggests that fish farming can be an efficient and sustainable fish-meat source for fish-meat gel production in Korea.