Analyzing Salt Content

- [Narrator] This instructional video will teach you how to incorporate rapid quality measurements into your small scale processed meat manufacturing establishment.

Keeping product quality parameters consistent can lead to increased sales by ensuring more repeat business and expanding your customer base through improved brand reputation.

In this video, we will discuss a rapid and cost effective method to measure salt content of your finished products.

Reducing salt in the diet is a popular health trend in most foods consumed today.

Even sausages have healthier versions like reduced fat or lower sodium options.

Salt is a functional ingredient in meat processing, which helps to aid in protein extraction and binding ground meat particles together.

It is critical when manufacturing your products that you have an accurate yet rapid way to evaluate the consistency of these functional ingredients, especially in reduced sodium formulations.

Manufacturing of processed meats in the olden days was inconsistent, resulting in product that varied from day to day in terms of sensory and quality attributes.

As a general rule, product formulations were not written down and salt content could easily vary greatly between products.

At minimum, the employee performing the titration assay should always wear eye protection, a lab coat or apron, as well as non-latex gloves and closed-toe shoes.

To determine the salt content of meat products, several supplies will be needed and include the following; Scale, two 150 milliliter glass beakers, glass stir rod, hot plate, distilled water, 100 milliliter graduated cylinder, Number One Whatman filter paper, and Number 1176 Quantab High Range Chloride test strips by Hach.

First, tare the beaker on the scale.

Place 10 grams of the ground meat product in the beaker.

Next, add 90 milliliters of distilled water to the beaker.

Place the beaker on the hot plate and heat until rolling boil.

Stir occasionally with the glass rod so that the product does not clump or stick to the sides of the beaker.

Once the solution comes to a boil, remove from the heat and allow the solution to cool.

In order to keep solid particles from touching the test strips, filter paper is used in the beaker solution.

First, fold the paper to create a cone shape.

Insert the cone-shaped filter paper into the cooled beaker.

The paper should fit into the beaker and the filtrate solution will seep into the center of the open space inside the cone.

Insert one test strip into the filtrate solution contained by the cone-shaped filter.

Allow the strip to react completely.

A yellow test strip at the top of the strip will turn a dark blue color once the reaction with the silver and chloride is complete.

The test strip works by allowing the solution to travel up a capillary column laminated on the test strip impregnated with silver dichromate.

The reaction to form silver chloride changes the color of the column to white.

After the indicator line at the top of the test strip turns a dark blue, observe where the white reaction line stops on the test strip.

This test needs to be performed in duplicate to increase the accuracy of the results.

A simple mathematical average of the two readings will provide the most accurate result.

If the two tests are quite different, a third sample can be made to see which test may be an outlier and discarded.

The reading on the test strip can be converted to percentage sodium chloride by reading the table on the back of the test strip bottle.