Abstract:

Fresh Japanese sea bass was used as raw material for dry-cured fish production. The orthogonal array design method was used to study the effects of drying temperature, relative humidity, drying time and salt amount on the quality and proteolysis of dry-cured fish products. Proteolysis index (PI, %) gradually increased with rising temperature, while total free amino acid (ΣFAA) showed a tendency to initially increase and then decrease. Drying temperature had significant effect (P ＜0.01) on both PI and Σ FAA. The optimum process conditions obtained by regression optimization for maximizing Σ FAA were as follows: drying temperature 15－29 ℃, relative humidity 70%－82%, drying time 72 h and salt amount 4.5% (on the basis of fish weight). The dry-cured product obtained under these conditions contained 2.84% of salt and 64.33% of moisture and scored the highest sensory score.

Key words: Japanese sea bass, air-drying ripening, proteolysis, free amino acids, regression optimization