STANDARDIZATION OF THE PROCESSES OF ELABORATION OF SMOKED AND NATURAL SAUSAGE AND DETERMINATION OF THE LIFE OF ANAQUEL

Objective: To determine the shelf life of sausage under the natural and smokedprocesses to standardize their manufacturing process, evaluate theirphysicochemical and microbiological quality using a mathematical model of orderzero chemical kinetics.Methodology: The sausage manufacturing process was standardized, and twocooking and preservation methods were applied: boiling and smoking in oak wood.For the shelf-life analysis, a partially staggered sampling was used. The productsamples were kept refrigerated (2 to 6 ºC, for 7 weeks), and physicochemical andmicrobiological analyses were carried out on them every week. A mathematicalmodel based on order zero chemical kinetics was used with the obtained results todetermine the shelf life of the processed products.Results: The shelf life of sausages depends on the applied preservation process;in the case of the traditional (hot water) process, the result was 33 d, andincreased to 56 d in the smoked and cooked with dry heat, due to the watercontent of each product, as well as the smoking antimicrobial action.