Dried Meat Products Obtained by Different Methods from Past to Present

Dried meat products gain further attention worldwide thanks to features very similar to fresh meat products with a longer shelf life. Pastirma in Turkey, jerky in North America, carne-de-sol in Brazil, biltong in South Africa, kaddid in North Africa, and cecina in Spain exemplify dried meat products. In this work, the effect of various drying methods on drying characteristics and quality attributes of meat is summarized. The drying methods include sun or hot air drying, vacuum drying, ultrasonic drying, freeze-drying, cold drying, microwave drying, heat pump drying, pulsed electric field drying, and refractance window drying, etc. Meat drying through conventional approaches such as sun or hot air drying found a slow process and may lead to adverse effects, such as color darkening, shrinkage, loss of aroma and nutritional compounds, lipid oxidation together with a decrease in rehydration rate. In order to prevent these adverse effects, new and combined drying methods, offering various superiorities over conventional ones, have been developed around the globe.