Natural colouring for meat and sausages
Natural colouring for meat and sausages
The colour of meat and sausages is crucially important when the consumer is about to make a purchase. To successfully place a product on the market, it is therefore especially important to optimise the colourful appearance of your finished product.
Factors influencing colour development:
A number of options are available for using natural colouring agents.
The following influencing factors are to be considered when choosing colouring additives:
- pH value
- pH value progression
- Heat treatment
- Selection of raw materials
- Colour changes due to storage
Selection of the colouring agent and dosage should be based on all of the production parameters, so that optimum results can be achieved with individual adjustment to the recipe concerned.
Colouring with natural paprika - capsicum
Paprika, also called chilli, peppers or jalapeno depending on its strength, is characterised by highly varied colour nuances and intensities according to its type, cultivation region and time of harvesting. The red colouration is primarily due to pigments of the carotinoid series. In powder form the content is up to about 0.5%.
The desired colouration of your finished product can be achieved by selectively combining different types of paprika. In addition, paprika rounds off the flavour profile.
Colouring with paprika extracts, oleoresins
As described for paprika, good results can also be obtained with paprika extracts and oleoresins of different intensities.
Often paprika powder and paprika extract are combined.
Colouring with vegetable and fruit extracts
Vegetable and fruit extracts can be used as plant-based colouring additives. The colouring here comes from anthocyanins which count as phytochemicals to the flavonoids. More than 200 anthocyanins are known which, depending on their origin, yield a red, violet, blue or bluish black colouration.
Red beetroot juice powder is also suitable for colouring products such as raw sausage.
When using these natural colouring additives, the pH value should be considered since the colour development is strongly affected by this. Furthermore, many of these colouring agents are not temperature stable and thus are problematic if used in scalded sausages.
Colouring with carmine:
Colouring agent carmine, whose E-number denotation is E120, is stable in terms of both temperature and pH-value and can therefore be used with outstanding results for both raw and scalded sausage.
The statutory regulations of the destination country must be observed.