Faced to public health issues, the charcuterie industries have begun to decrease salt content of the cooked products. This phD-work aimed at bringing scientific responses to know how far the salt content can be reduced in the cooked ham made without polyphosphate. The work was focused on the thermal treatment and on two key phenomena for the cooked ham quality: adhesion between muscles, which ensures ham sliceability and mass transfer, which determines the cooking yield. Adhesion between meat pieces is related to the tumbling exudate, which forms gel during the thermal treatment. Our study confirms that a low added salt content significantly increases adhesion, comparing to no added salt. However, as soon as the salt concentration in meat is greater than 0.8%, no impact on adhesion is observed under our tumbling conditions. The results have been interpreted by the fact that the increase of salt content is not sufficient to reinforce the bindings between the gel and the meat surface, where the rupture certainly takes place. The study of mass transfer confirms that adding salt leads to a decrease in the cooking loss. But, as soon as salt is added, the effect of its concentration is negligible. Under our experimental conditions, it would thus be possible to reduce the salt content in cooked ham to 0.8% without affecting cooking yield and adhesion. A model was built to predict the cooking loss in low salted pork meat and microbial safety after the thermal treatment. This model was used to predict the cooking yield and the pasteurizing value during different scenarios issued from the industries. Model can be used to optimize the industrial production of cooked ham which has been slightly salted.
