Czech J. Food Sci., 2024, 42(5):372-381 | DOI: 10.17221/49/2024-CJFS

Quality characteristics of Hokkaido brown bear meat sauces prepared with rice koji mold and food enzymesOriginal Paper

Azusa Takeda¹, Masataka Saito², Takeshi Nagai^3,4

¹ Faculty of Agriculture, Yamagata University, Tsuruoka, Japan

² Department of Applied Nutrition, Kagawa Nutrition University, Sakado, Japan

³ Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences, Yamagata University, Tsuruoka, Japan

⁴ The United Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences, Iwate University, Morioka, Japan

Hokkaido brown bear (Ursus arctos yesoensis) meats are used as ingredients of game cuisines. In contrast, shank meats are unsuitable as edible meats due to gamy tastes and tough meats. Here, new meat sauces were developed using glutinous rice koji and food enzymes for the application of the underutilised meat i.e. shank meat. The proximate analysis showed that the obtained sauces were reduced-salt sauces at approximately 6.4–7.7 g·(100 g)^–1 as salt equivalent. The sauces had a light colour, no unacceptable odours, and strong sweetness and umami taste. The sauce with good sensory acceptability was rich in glutamic acid, leucine, lysine, and alanine. Besides, the essential amino acid contents were remarkably high at approximately 55.6%. In addition, the tested sauces had good antioxidative activities, scavenging activities against reactive oxygen species such as superoxide anion radicals and hydroxyl radicals, and angiotensin I-converting enzyme and hyaluronidase inhibitory activities. These results suggested that Hokkaido brown bear shank meat sauces, which had positive effects for human health, could be used as one of novel condiment with consumer demands.

Keywords: functionality; game meats; Hokkaido brown bear; meat sauce; underutilised resource

Received: March 14, 2024; Revised: August 21, 2024; Accepted: September 24, 2024; Prepublished online: October 24, 2024; Published: October 30, 2024  Show citation