Gary Thornton
Poultry Processing Worldwide
Hot boning cuts costs,
improves meat quality
A method of pre-rigor boning
of poultry developed by the
University of Michigan’s Dr Ike
Michigan State University’s Dr
Ike Kang described a process
for the hot boning of poultry at
the Midwest Poultry Federation
Convention.
Kang could cut processing costs
and improve meat quality.
Has hot boning’s time come? Poultry
further processors have long eyed
pre-rigor deboning of poultry as a way
to streamline processes and cut costs,
but no viable method has existed on a
commercial scale. Now, the University
of Michigan’s Dr Iksoon (Ike) Kang has
developed a method applicable on an
industrial scale for taking hot muscles
from poultry carcasses prior to chilling
and processing them before the onset of
rigor mortis.
The method can shorten processing
time, result in higher plant throughput
and improve meat functionality. In
some applications, cooling space could
be dramatically reduced, along with a
reduction is electricity usage required for refrigeration.
Developed by Kang during several years of work at the Kraft
Foods/Oscar Mayer turkey processing plant in Newberry, South
Carolina, the method involves three innovative steps:
✷ Grinding or macerating hot-boned muscles with cryogenic
agents
✷ Pre-blending the meat with ingredients such as salt,
phosphate and/or cure
✷ Processing the procedures in a continuous manner
meat typically requires significant
cooler space and meat storage and
involves six to seven hours of time.
“A process of speeding up
and and getting quicker meat
turnover has always been desired
to achieve at slaughter plants,”
Kang said in a presentation at the Midwest
Poultry Federation Convention. “Pre-rigor
or hot boning is a way of accelerating the
process and reducing the time between
slaughter and further processing.”
The muscles are boned either immediately
after evisceration and washing or right after
pre-chilling (see “Turkey boning process”). Hot
boning, therefore, allows cutting in half or
eliminating the chilling processing.
✷ Hot boning – Muscles
are deboned while the
meat temperature is still
close to body temperature
(around 105F to 110F)
Three boning methods:
✷ Warm boning – Muscles are
deboned between 50F and 90F
✷ Chill boning – The standard
procedure, in which the
temperature of the muscles
is reduced to 40F or below
Bypassing pre-boning chilling
Conventional chill boning takes meat through pre-chilling
and chilling steps that bring the temperature down to below
40F before deboning occurs. Completing processing of the
Benefits of hot boning
Kang identified the following four benefits of using pre-rigor
muscles for processed turkey products:
✷ Productivity – minimises process time, increases throughput
✷ In-a-day production – saves energy, cooling space and
maintenance costs
✷ Product quality improvement – induces slice integrity and
improves slicing yields
✷ Potential product opportunity – provides a way for sodium
reduction or phosphate elimination
