What to consider when using chicken and turkey proteins

Here we explore three main things to know about using chicken or turkey protein in your poultry product, and how they can add value to your product.

Have you been wondering if you should incorporate chicken protein or turkey protein into your poultry product? Is it an ingredient that would be a better replacement for another additive you’re already using?

Soy, also known as soya, is still the most common additive. It’s also well-known and widely recognized among manufacturers. But not all consumers are as accepting of soy being added to a food product that doesn’t naturally contain soy. Even though poultry proteins are newer on the market, they have the potential to appeal to more consumers. That’s in part because consumers love protein, and they are also drawn to a cleaner ingredient list.

Here, we explore how Sonac’s poultry protein, called QBind Chicken FPP C or QBind Turkey FPP T, works in and affects your poultry end product.

Color of the end product

Our chicken and turkey proteins are both very light in color—and as such, they are easily incorporated into essentially any chicken and turkey product. Adding 0.3% to 0.5% of FPP provides benefits like better yield, improved texture, and meatier taste, while not affecting the color of most final products. Above 0.5%, and up to about 0.8%, provides even higher yield without affecting texture, and might give a darker color to the end product which, depending on consumer preferences, is acceptable.

Final flavor profile

The goal when you add FPP C or FPP T to your poultry product is to improve the quality and cost of your end poultry product, but maintain a similar flavor as if the product was 100% meat. The amino acid, glutamine, in the poultry protein brings a roasted, meaty flavor, which pumps up the flavor of your chicken or turkey end product. The high glutamine content of FPP C and FPP T also enhances the intensity of any added salt and spices in your poultry product formulation. This also allows you to cut back on how much salt (and sometimes other spices) you need in your recipe. If you can use less salt and still have a very tasty and juicy poultry end product, you’ll have a healthier product.

Raw ingredient cost

If you were to directly compare the price of soy to the price of chicken protein or turkey protein, soy has historically been cheaper (though that can change, and is currently changing, as soy prices can fluctuate—and currently, they’re on the rise due to a poor harvest.) But what is often easily lost in translation is that poultry protein is functionally superior to soy: FPP C and FPP T have better water-binding capacity so you can add more water per amount of protein compared to soy, so less poultry protein is needed compared to soy, and thus a costs savings. Also, using poultry protein gives you a better yield in your end product, and that means more product can be sold and more revenue is generated.

You can read about more reasons to use functional chicken and turkey proteins in your end products in this article.

Interested in a real-world example of poultry proteins in use?

Would you like to request a sample and test these proteins? You can fill out a request here and a product specialist from Sonac will arrange for a sample to be sent.

Learn more about QBind Chicken FPP C, and QBind Turkey FPP T. Or download our leaflets.