Quality improvement of ready-to-eat chicken breast after two-stage heating: The role of actomyosin dissociation.

Preventing quality deterioration in ready-to-eat (RTE) sauce-braised chicken breast during high-temperature sterilization (121 °C for 10 min) remains challenging. Herein, we propose a new strategy to mitigate quality deterioration induced by two-stage heating (cooking and high-temperature sterilization) by regulating actomyosin dissociation through adjustment of the cooking temperature (50-98 °C). The results indicated that samples treated at 50 °C exhibited the highest level of actin released from actomyosin compared to those treated at 98 °C. This was accompanied by a reduction in actomyosin particle size, a significant increase in active sulfhydryl content (P < 0.05), and elevated surface hydrophobicity. In addition, microstructural, textural, and water distribution analyses revealed that actomyosin dissociation mitigated the severe contraction of muscle fibers during thermal processing, thereby improving tenderness, reducing immobilized water loss, and increasing product water content by 16-17%. These findings provide new insights into controlling quality in thermally processed RTE chicken products.