The benefits of boosting protein levels in your injected ham or bacon

Protein is a popular ingredient these days, mostly because consumers are attracted to the healthfulness of the nutrient. Food processors have a variety of reasons for adding protein to their meat product. In this case, adding protein to pork products, such as injected ham or bacon, offers multiple benefits.

The benefits of adding protein to your ham product

Adding protein to your ham products has several benefits. These are the three most important ones.

1. Improves sliceability (e.g., thinner slices, and easier to slice).
2. Increases yield due to less cooking loss and less breakage during slicing.
3. Enhances nutrition profile by increasing grams of protein per serving.

If you’d like to upgrade your product thanks to one of the benefits mentioned above, Sonac’s QBoost Pork Hydro-P Premium is a high-quality solution at a competitive price.

Why use Q-Boost Pork Hydro-P Premium to boost protein

Hydro-P Premium is a hydrolyzed collagen, made from pork bones. It is extracted from porcine bones and broken down into shorter peptides, dried, and then sold as a powder. Because the collagen is broken down into shorter peptides (i.e., hydrolyzed), it’s completely soluble in injection brines (thus, won’t clog injection needles).

Although Hydro-P Premium does not gel when cooked with water at any ratio, when you apply it in a meat matrix, Hydro-P Premium significantly increases water retention levels and total product yield.

In addition to the 3 benefits we already mentioned, the use of Hydro-P Premium:

1. Enhances product quality

Hydro-P Premium boosts water retention, which helps improve product yield.To address the increased yield benefit, Sonac did multiple tests in ham without and with the application of Hydro-P Premium. Here we have summed up the results of the trials with injected cooked ham. The reference ham in this trial did not contain any added protein; the test ham was treated with 0.8% Hydro-P Premium protein enrichment on the final product. On average, a 2% yield improvement is seen when Hydro-P Premium is added (injection level: 50%).

Also, it adds a mild meaty flavor to tumbled and injected pork products, such as injected ham and reformed ham products. And last, but not least, product texture will be firmer, thus adding Hydro-P Premium will allow ham slices to be thinner and total yield to be greater

2. It's cost effective

When using hydrolyzed collagen protein derived from porcine skin, it’s likely that prices will fluctuate because the price of pork skin has historically fluctuated. At Sonac, we make our hydrolyzed collagen from porcine bones and bone source is more stable. This, combined with our modern production technology allows us to offer Hydro-P Premium at the highest quality and for a competitive price. This is also cost effective for customers who produce ham products because the high-quality protein ensures a greater yield and less loss in production.

3. Creates a clear label

Another advantage to choosing Hydro-P Premium to add protein to your pork product is that it is natural and can be declared in the ingredient list as either bouillon or collagen. Both terms are recognizable and pronounceable to consumers—thus considered “clear” and “clean.”

A natural way to increase protein content

To learn more about Hydro-P Premium, download our whitepaper "The benefits of hydrolyzed collagen for pork meat" here.

If you’re interested in securing a sample of Hydro-P Premium, connect with one of our product specialists here to secure yourself a sample.