The Effect of End-Point Cooking Temperature and Storage on the Color of Turkey Meat

INTRODUCTION VARIABLES affecting color of further processed poultry have been a concern of processors for some time. Some factors involved have been elucidated with recent research. Such aspects as age, sex and strain (Froning, 1968); dietary or chill water nitrates and nitrites (Froning et al., 1969a; Mugler et al., 1970); exhaust fume inhalation prior to slaughter (Froning et al., 1969b); and oven gases (Pool, 1956) have been found to affect poultry meat color in varying degrees. End-point cooking temperatures and poultry meat color have received little emphasis in previous studies. End-point cooking temperatures and color has been studied in red meat products. Watts (1954) identified the insoluble brown pigments in cooked meat as denatured globin ferric hemichromogen. Tappel (1957) concluded that pink pigments found in underdone cooked beef were undenatured oxymyoglobin. Bernofsky et al. (1959) also found that pigments extractable from cooked fresh beef were mainly oxymyoglobin. They further observed.…