Use chicken and turkey protein to improve the shape and stability of fresh formed poultry products like meatballs and burgers

If you’re producing a fresh-formed poultry product, such as chicken meatballs, turkey meatballs, chicken burgers, or turkey burgers, you’ll want to include functional poultry protein. Here we explore why adding functional poultry protein is of value, and then how you can use functional poultry protein in fresh-formed products.

Adding functional protein to a burger or meatballs

QBind Chicken FPP C and QBind Turkey FPP T consist of 40% protein and 40% collagen. The collagen is what brings functionality to the poultry protein—and will improve the shape and stability of your fresh-formed meat product.

There are two key benefits during processing:

• 2 - Collagen binds water, making a firmer meat dough, and thus can easily be formed into meatballs or burgers.
• 1 - Also, including FPP C or FPP T decreases stickiness of the meat dough, which could result in less loss. For example, your machine stays cleaner during processing so there’s less loss within the machines and your total yield is increased.

There are additional benefits during cooking if you use functional chicken or turkey protein in your product. One, the dough’s form will be maintained—your meatballs will stay round and your burgers will keep their patty shape. Another benefit is that less moisture is lost so there’s a higher cooking yield and the end product stays juicy.

The methods of application

There are two main ways to use FPP C and FPP T in burgers and meatballs.

One way is to replace some of the meat in your chicken or turkey product with poultry protein. If you have a burger with 90% meat, you can reduce it to 85% meat and add 1% FPP C or FPP T and 4% water. Your burger with 85% meat is comparable to the original 90% meat: the flavor, the texture, and the juiciness are all similar.

The second way is to just add poultry protein to your chicken or turkey product. When you add extra chicken or turkey protein to your burger recipe (only about 1% extra protein is needed, depending on your formulation), it will also improve the burgers’ cooking yield. Cooking yield is improved because our poultry protein is a great water binder, so there is less moisture lost during cooking. As a result, there’s less meat shrinkage and the burger will be juicier.

Request a protein sample for testing

Read more about our functional poultry protein (QBind Chicken FPP C and QBind Turkey FPP T) here. Or request a sample and test these proteins by filling out a request here. A Sonac product specialist will arrange for a sample to be sent.