Elevate the value of your chicken and turkey products

Learn why and how functional chicken and turkey protein will improve your food products and the production process behind them.

If you’re looking to improve the taste, label, juiciness, yield, and/or cost of your chicken or turkey product, functional poultry protein —called QBind Chicken FPP C or QBind Turkey FPP T — should be your go-to choice. That’s because chicken and turkey protein truly will elevate your product.

But what is functional poultry protein?

It’s a natural ingredient, not an additive. Functional poultry protein is a powder made from the chicken or turkey skin and fat, which makes it 40 percent protein, 40 percent collagen, 10 percent fat, and there’s 10 percent moisture that remains once the powder is dry. It’s added to a food product for its binding and emulsifying properties, as well as its taste-enhancing properties.

Poultry protein is also quite versatile—it can be incorporated into various chicken and turkey products, from emulsions like hot dogs and sausages, to ground meat products like meatballs and hamburger, to tumbled and injected products like reformed or whole muscle hams.

Read on to find out why you should be adding functional poultry protein to your chicken and turkey products.

7 ways functional poultry protein will improve your chicken and turkey products

1. Improve taste and texture.

Add chicken or turkey protein to your food product and you’ll improve the overall eating quality. First, it’ll upgrade your product from a softer texture that you can break with your tongue to one that’s meaty and requires chewing. Second, your food product will be juicy. That’s because it binds the meat matrix together better, so it retains more water when cooked. And also there’s collagen in FPP C and FPP T and so when the product is cooked, the collagen melts and gives the product a tender juiciness.

2. Better slice-ability.

Another benefit to improved texture (which, again, is because of enhanced binding in the meat matrix), is that your meat product is strong enough that it won’t break on a high-speed slicing line. Less breakage means less product loss and greater total yield.

3. Less water loss.

Water loss—also known as syneresis—not only impacts how your product looks, but also it shortens its shelf life. When you add functional poultry protein to your chicken or turkey product, it helps keep the water in the product versus seeping out into the packaging. Why is this valuable? For one, consumers are more likely to purchase your product, and secondly, there’s less free water in the packaging to degrade and spoil the product over time.

4. Greater yield.

Similar to what we discussed regarding slice-ability—there’s less breakage and product loss when the texture is firmer and can stand up to the speed of a slicer. But also, because a product like a chicken nugget will maintain more juiciness when fried (compared to other similar nuggets that don’t use FPP C), your product will maintain its weight after it’s cooked.

5. More ethically responsible.

Using functional poultry protein is an environmentally and socially responsible choice because it uses other parts of the animal (the skin and fat) for our consumption, and typically those are parts of the animal that we eat less than they are available for human consumption.

6. Boost nutrition.

Compared to a soya binder or emulsifier, functional poultry protein is superior because it delivers a robust amount of all of the essential amino acids that the human body needs.

7. Cleaner label.

Functional poultry protein is an excellent replacement for allergens like soya and even casein or egg. It also acts as a binder so you can use fewer emulsifiers, stabilizers, and/or thickeners. Plus, because it contains collagen that may permit you to cut down on some gelling ingredients or thickeners. Eliminating these additives and using FPP C or FPP T streamlines the food product ingredient label and cuts out ingredients a consumer might consider unfamiliar or unrecognizable.

How to improve the value of your chicken and turkey products

In general, adding functional poultry protein to your chicken or turkey product is a win-win for you and the consumer. It will improve the taste, texture, and nutrition of your product. Functional poultry protein is also a responsible ingredient choice that can help you lower costs and improve product yield.

Learn more about Functional Poultry Protein (QBind Chicken FPP C or QBind Turkey FPP T) here, and download our leaflet.