Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of freezing and thawing methods on the quality of pork meat. The freezing methods for pork meat were the cryogenic freezing with liquid nitrogen gas, fast freezing at $-70^{\circ}C$ and normal freezing at $-20^{\circ}C$. The thawing methods were tested on low temperature thawing at refrigerative temperature($4^{\circ}C$), room temperature($20^{\circ}C$), high temperature($60^{\circ}C$) and using microwave. The quality of pork meat frozen by cryogenic methods was better than those of fast and normal freezing methods. The cooking hardness of pork meat frozen by cryogenic method showed the highest value as 1,898 g. In case of fast freezing, the hardness of pork meat was 1,472 g and that of normal frozen pork meat was 1,541 g. The high cooking hardness value of cryogenic frozen pork meat showed that the cryogenic freezing method made less freeze damage like textural softness. The drip-loss of pork meat thawed at refrigerative temperature($4^{\circ}C$), room temperature($20^{\circ}C$), high temperature($60^{\circ}C$) were shown lower than that of microwave thawing. The cooking hardness of pork meat that was thawed by microwave showed the lowest value among the thawing methods. The cryogenic freezing was the most useful freezing method for preserving quality, decreasing the freeze damage of pork meat. And thawing at refrigerative temperature was the most effective method to prevent quality loss and weight loss by drip-loss.