Studies on Curing of Meat Products-I

A Modified Determination Method for Nitrate Ion in Meat Prcducts

Abstract

Several methods have been proposed for the determination of NO₃^- in meat products among these methods. The m-xylenol and the Ratcliff methods are frequently used which cannot be considered as satisfactory especially when applied for analysis of many samples simultaneously. The authors investigated to simplify the complicated procedure of the RATCLIFF method, in which NO₃^- is reduced using a cadmium column, and devised a modified method.
The procedure of this new method is as follows: Extract 5-10g of finely minced meat with 300-400ml of distilled water at 80°C for 30 minutes, after standing for 10 minutes at room temperature. On cooling, make up the volume to 500ml with distilled water and filter. 50ml of the filtrate is passed through a cadmium column and total NO₃^-•NO₂^- is detrmined colorimetrically at 540mμ through color development with a solution of sulfamine and naphthylethylenediamine. Similarly, NO₂^- is determined separately with the same eluate forgoing treatment on the cadmium column. The difference in both these values would result in the NO₃^- content.
Recovery was about 95%, when 500 ppm of NO₃^- was added to whale meat.