Post-salting studies in Spanish cured ham manufacturing. Time reduction by using brine thawing-salting.

The use of the simultaneous brine thawing/salting on frozen raw material was compared in a previous work with the traditional pile salting method. The aim of this study was to characterise and compare the post-salting stage in Spanish cured ham production by processing fresh and thawed raw material with the traditional pile salting method (which can be considered as the reference method), with the results obtained using the brine thawing/salting method, with and without applying vacuum impregnation. The obtained results show that the thawed salted hams exhibited a higher NaCl diffusion than the fresh ones, implying a shorter post-salting period. Post-salting stage could be reduced from the 50 days employed in the traditional fresh raw material salting, to 25 days when using frozen hams brine thawed/salted. No influence of the use of vacuum impregnation during the salting stage was observed on the post-salting period.