Shelf life of rehydrated, frozen and thawed stock fish products

Summary

Production of rehydrated stock fish for the consumer market is growing, but rehydrated stock fish is hampered by short shelf life, even in chilled storage. One option to overcome this problem is to sell this product frozen. Five different test with the aim of extending the shelf life of the thawed rehydrated stock fish were performed; temperature during rehydration, rehydration with or without skin, using salt brine at the end of rehydration, packaging with CO2 emitter and high pressure processing (HPP) up to 600 MPa. Only HPP showed a potential in increasing the shelf life, as 600 MPa gave a significant reduction of bacteria and increased the shelf life. However, the high bacterial count after rehydration is a major problem, and this issue must be resolved in order to obtain acceptable shelf life of the product.