Icelandic salted fish products have long been sought after and prominent in foreign markets. This strong position can be traced to the great development of processing and processing in recent years, which have completely changed all handling of production.
The majority of Icelandic salted fish products are sold to Spain, where wet-processed salted fish is popular and a good price is obtained. However, there are other needs in the Portuguese and Brazilian markets, where the demand for dried salted fish is higher. These markets are large and it is therefore desirable for Icelandic producers to increase their share in these markets. For this, however, further process control of drying and dehydration needs to be worked on, based on the salting methods used in Iceland. It can be estimated that the best processing and processing processes, from raw materials to final products, can promote a quality product that is suitable for this new market for Icelandic salted fish products. There have also been regular complaints about acid-salted saddles that can be traced to the distribution of salt around the muscle.
In a new project, which Matís and Íslenskir Saltfiskframleiðendur (ÍSF) are working on and received a grant from the AVS research fund to carry out, special attention will be paid to the distribution of salt and water around the salted fish muscle and how different treatments affect this delicate balance and quality of the final product. One of the goals of the project is to find the reason why the aforementioned defects occur and to prevent their formation with improved methods of action.
The latest technological advances in food research (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)) will be used, as well as traditional chemical and physical properties measurements in order to gain the best possible understanding of the effects of different treatment on the quality of salted fish products. MRI is familiar to most people who have gone to hospital for research, but research with the technology within food research is relatively new and has so far not been carried out in Icelandic projects. In the project, the MRI technology will be used to provide insight into the structure of the muscle and the distribution of water and salt around it in a graphical way. One of the main advantages of this technology is that it has no effect on the samples and the samples are therefore undamaged after analysis. NMR measurements will also be performed, where more detailed quantitative measurements of the effect of processing methods on the mobility and distribution of salt and water, inside and outside the muscle cells, will be performed. It will also be examined how this balance affects the quality of salted fish products and how the processing methods can be improved with regard to this balance between water and salt in the muscle.
The project is funded by AVS for one year and is carried out in collaboration with the Icelandic Saltfish Producers (ÍSF) and the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in Clermont-Ferrand in France.
Further information is provided by dr. María Guðjónsdóttir, project manager at Matís and Sigurjón Arason, Matís' chief engineer.