The effects of mixed starter cultures on the quality of dry fer- mented Chinese-style sausages

Three different batches of dry fermented Chinese-style sausages; CHS-LC, CHS-SX and CHS-SL were prepared separately inoculating with Lactobacillus casei subspp casei-1.001, Staphylococcus xylosus-12 and a mixture of these two starters in equal proportion. The water activity and pH ranged from 0.795 to 0.826 and 4.10 to 5.26 respectively with no significant difference in weight losses in final products. Likewise, residual nitrite and volatile basic nitrogen ranged from 1.99 to 3.52 ppm and 15.17 to 18.56mg/100g respectively. Moreover, the non protein nitrogen (NPN), alpha amino acids (ANN) as well as red color were increased in batch CHS-SL. However, the texture profile analysis showed no changes (P>0.05). Lactic acid bacteria were predominated microbe after fermentation in all batches, which showed good inhibitory effects to the growth of Micrococcaceae, Enterobacteriaceae and Yeast and Molds during ripening. Sensory evaluation result showed that the batch CHS-SL was superior (P<0.05) in overall quality attributes. Therefore, mixed cultures of L. casei subspp casei-1.001 and S. xylosus-12 would be the most appropriate meat starter culture for producing dry fermented Chinese-style sausage.