Abstract:

This work studied the effect of different cooking methods (boiling, grilling and roasting) on lamb meat quality.
The compositions and contents of amino acids, fatty acids, and nucleotides, texture indices and muscle microstructure of
fresh and cooked meat samples were detected. Results showed that boiling resulted in the minimum cooking loss and had
the lowest effect on the compositions and contents of amino acids, fatty acids and nucleotides in lamb meat. The amino acid
pattern and fatty acid pattern of lamb meat were changed to different degree during cooking. The flavor amino acid content
in grilled lamb meat was 55.33%, which was significantly higher than that of the boiled (50.67%) and roasted samples
(49.33%). The flavor nucleotide content in roasted lamb meat was the lowest. Fatty acid composition and contents in boiled,
grilled and roasted lamb meat were different but not significantly. The chewiness of grilled lamb meat was better than that
of the boiled and grilled samples. Muscle fiber bundles, the perimysium and intermuscular fat in roasted lamb meat were
damaged most seriously.

Key words: lamb meat, cooking methods, amino acid, fatty acid, nucleotide, scanning electron microscope