engleski

Bacterial Starter Cultures in the Production of Traditional Sausages

Food fermentation has been used for centuries as a method to preserve perishable food products. The row materials traditionally used for fermentation are as diverse as: fruits, cereals, honey, vegetables, milk, meat and fish. It is possible to obtain a large variety of different food products by selecting different row materials, starter culture and fermentation conditions. Traditional salami is produced by fermentation of a sausage batter containing meat, curing agents, salts and spices. The microbiology of fermented sausages is varied and complex. The type of microflora that develops is often closely related to the ripening technique utilised. In spontaneous meat fermentation, the lactic acid bacteria derived from row material or the environment are responsible for both lactic acid productions resulting from carbohydrate utilisation, and also a low pH value. Today the modern meat industry has to ensure high quality, reduce variability and enhance organoleptic characteristics in sausage production, which are not feasible using spontaneous fermentation methods. Therefore starter cultures have been developed during the last 40 years reducting fermentation times, ensuring low residual nitrate and nitrate contents in the end product and standardising the organoleptic characteristics. Today, the most of the commercialy available starter cultures are mixtures of a strain of lactic acid bacteria and a strain of staphylococci and/or micrococci genus. Dry fermented sausages are popular meat products in Croatia, Italy and other Europian countries (Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland). Manufecturing of fermented sausages has a long story in Slavonija, a region of Croatia and in Friuli Venezia Giulia region in the Northeast Italy. In this regions a traditional fermented sausages is produced without microbial starters. The most important and produces sausages in Croatia is Kulen sausage. It is made from pork meat and has a special flavour that comes from mixing meat with red pepper. By investigating the ecology and technological potential of indigenous strains of lactic acid bacteria, micrococci and staphylococci this study opens up possibility that, in the future, some producers might prefer to use mixture of this indigenous strain as starter culture to reflect the biodiversity of producing region. Such an approach could promote sausage's most enthralling and fascinating characteristic, namely is diversity of style.

sausages; bacterial starter culture; traditional production

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