Shelf life of salt-cured fillets of cod stored at 30 °C

Summary

In 2013, the Norwegian Seafood Research Fund (FHF) initiated a project “Shelf life of salt-cured fish”. The aim of the project is to study shelf life of salt-cured cod at different storage conditions, including storage at elevated temperatures. Salt-cured fillets refer to dried salted fillets. This report presents the results of shelf life of salt-cured cod stored at 30 °C at 80 and 60% relative humidity, respectively. In this context, shelf-life is defined as the number of days until a pink / red discoloration is visible. The surface of salt-cured cod turns pink / red at a level of 10 000 000 halophiles / g salt-cured cod. This implies factors that influences the growth rate of halophiles affects the shelf life of salt-cured cod. Such factors include storage temperature, level of drying and relative humidity. The results show that shelf life with respect to pink or red discoloration corresponds to the initial level of halophiles and the level of humidity. In more detail, with an initial level of 10 CFU/g, the shelf life is 27 and 24 days at 30 °C when stored at 60 and 80 % relative humidity, respectively. At an initial level of 100 up to 10 000 CFU/g, the shelf life decreases successively to 13 days at both 60 and 80% relative humidity. It is emphasized that the results presented in this report are preliminary and indicative. Thus, corrections of suggested shelf life might occur after finalising corresponding experiments at 20, 25 and 35 °C.