The use of a starfruit dietary fiber concentrate (SDFC) as a novel ingredient in Vienna sausages was investigated. A constrained mixture design was followed to evaluate the effect of different proportions of SDFC (0-10%), pork meat (0-100%) and turkey meat (0-100%) on the shear force, shrinkage, color, residual nitrite, moisture and polyphenol contents of sausages. Moreover, a chemical, physical and sensory characterization of the optimized formulations was performed. The cubic model equations demonstrated that the SDFC in mixture with pork or turkey meat had a reducing effect on nitrites, moisture, shear force and shrinkage, while there was an increase on the polyphenol concentration as the increase of SDFC proportion in the formulations. The optimization resulted in Vienna-type sausages formulated with a ternary mixture of pork/turkey meat and high SDFC proportion (7.4-8.4%). These products had high total dietary fiber content (11.04-17.79%) and antioxidant polyphenols, low residual nitrite content, shrinkage and red color. They presented good taste, color and texture attributes, and were sensory acceptable. This study demonstrated that enrichment of Vienna-type sausages with SDFC in mixture with pork/turkey meat is a way to obtain potential functional meat products with high antioxidant dietary fiber content, reduced in nitrites, and good physical and sensory properties.
Keywords: Physical characteristics; Polyphenols; Residual nitrite; Sensory characteristics; Starfruit dietary fiber concentrate; Vienna-type sausages.