Abstract: Roasting is one of the major ways of cooking lamb in our country, whereas the suitability of different cuts of lamb for roasting is not clear yet. An overall study of the quality of roast meat of different lamb cuts can provide a valuable guideline to standardize roast lamb processing. This research was carried out with Bamei × Small tailed raw lambs raised in drylot and slaughtered at the age of 6 month. Seven carcass cuts, including striploin, shoulder, kunckle, loin, chuck tender, silverside and shank, were taken as samples for the study. Physicochemical parameters, processing quality, muscle fiber microstructural characteristics and eating quality were analyzed. Principal component analysis, cluster analysis, correlation analysis and comparison of coefficient of variation were used to screen the key quality indices of roast meat. A model for comprehensive quality assessment was developed as follows: Y = 0.345 7A1 + 0.264 0A2 + 0.253 5A3 + 0.136 8A4 (where A1 –A4 represent shear force, protein-to-fat ratio, gel cohesiveness and myofibrillar protein solubility, respectively). Shoulder and chuck tender were not suitable for roasting, striploin, kunckle, loin and silverside were moderately suitable for roasting, and shank was very suitable for roasting. A regression equation to describe sensory evaluation as a function of comprehensive quality evaluation was established as follows: y = 1.25x ? 0.06 (R2 = 0.871 3). In conclusion, the comprehensive quality evaluation model was able to accurately reflect the suitability of different lamb cuts for roasting, thus being useful to evaluate the quality of roast lamb.

Key words: lamb, processing, suitability, different cuts, roast