NEW: Replacing meat and fat in salami with fiberized animal protein

For a healthier, lower fat salami, Sonac’s fiberized protein—called QExtend Beef PF12 or QExtend Pork PF12—is the ideal ingredient to include in a salami recipe. It’s a one-of-a-kind product that’s made via a patented process and fairly new (introduced in 2019) so isn’t as well-known yet.

Why use qextend to replace meat and fat in salami

Using QExtend allows you to substantially lower the fat content of your salami product by up to 25%. It also helps to reduce ingredient cost, and overall increase the sustainability of your end product.

QExtend is easy to incorporate into production and improves the nutrition profile, yet there aren’t any negative changes to the taste of the salami. Your end product that includes QExtend will be identical to your reference (original) salami recipe to a consumer.

In lower fat, and especially “low-fat” meat products, taste is often sacrificed and the texture is drier. The overall quality of the end product goes down compared to a reference recipe. But, here, with QExtend, we can replace pork back fat in a salami without losing eating quality for the consumer. Using QExtend allows you to still have the appropriate juiciness for a salami, and all of the good, rich, meaty flavor.

For example, in tests at Sonac, we replaced pure pork back fat with QExtend in a 1:1 ratio. In a standard salami recipe, it’s common to use 20% pure back fat and 80% pork trimmings. We took out 5% pure pork back fat and replaced it with 5% QExtend, which translated to a 25% overall fat reduction. The following blind-tasting survey confirmed that no significant difference was noticed when QExtend replaced 25% of fat in salami. Most people just couldn't tell the difference.

Where to use qextend in the production process

Adding QExtend to a salami recipe and incorporating into the production process is fairly seamless. QExtend is handled exactly as the fat and beef or pork trimmings are in the early stages of the process. All components, including QExtend, are grinded into their appropriate millimeter particle size, mixed with condiments, and then filled into the casings and moved on to ripening, fermentation, and drying stages.

The benefit of using qextend in salami

It’s incredibly simple: the salami end product stays the same. It is completely comparable from a taste and texture standpoint to your reference salami recipe, but it is leaner (fewer calories and less (saturated) fat) and even less costly.

Want to learn more? Read more about QExtend Beef PF12 and QExtend Pork PF12 here.

You can also learn about the other cost-saving benefits and more when using QExtend here.