Feasibility assessment of vacuum cooling of cooked pork ham with water compared to that without water and with air blast cooling

To optimise vacuum cooling for application in the meat industry, an improved cooling method, i.e. vacuum cooling with water (or immersion vacuum cooling), was designed to cool cooked pork ham (2.2 ± 0.2 kg). It was found that the cooling time of vacuum cooling with water was significantly shorter than that of traditional air blast cooling (P < 0.05). For the cooling loss, vacuum cooling with water was significantly lower (6.99%) than that of vacuum cooling without water (13.71%) (P < 0.05). Significant differences in physical and chemical attributes were also observed for ham processed by vacuum cooling with and without water (P < 0.05). Therefore, for a certain size of pork ham, vacuum cooling with water could be an effective method to meet safety guidelines and obtain compatible quality attributes with air blast cooling.