Abstract
Alaska pollack caught in the Northern Pacific Ocean and frozen aboard vessel are skipped to the plant and processed into frozen fillets. In the present paper quality changes during thwaing, refreezing and storage at $-20^{\circ}C$ are discussed. Natural, running-water, vacuum and steam thawing were employed as thawing methods. And contact plate, air blast, immersion in dry ice-alcohol solution freezing and storage at $-5^{\circ}C$ were applied to refreeze the thawed fillets. As quality factors content of drip released, salt-extractable protein, VBN, DNA in the drip and pH were determined. In addition, bacteriological tests were also carried out along with the whole process. In thawing of round material, the vacuum thawing was more effective than any other method, resulting in drip, salt-extractable protein $(N\%)$, VBN and DNA as $4.4\%,\;1.82\%,\;16.21mg\%$ and $13.70\;{\mu}g/ml$, respectively. Storage at $-5^{\circ}C$ as refreezing method yielded lower in drip and DNA content but similar to or slightly higher in both salt-extractable protein and VBN, which might postulate that the quality of the frozen fillet depends not largely on the secondary freezing but on the conditions of thawing and primary freezing. It seemed that most of the bacterial flora in thawed fillet came from skin and viscera of fish, worker's hands, utensils and other processing facilities, since sanitary indicative bacteria were not detected in the frozen flesh of round Alaska pollack. Bacterial quality of fillet varied with thawing methods, vacuum thawing appeared more sanitative compared with other methods as natural, running-water, and steam thawing. Bacterial colonies isolated from the thawed fillet were composed of $73.8\%$ Gram negative rod shape, $4.9\%$ Gram positive rod shape, $18.0\%$ cocci, and $3.3\%$ yeast. Decreasing rate of coliform group of the fillet during the storage at $-20^{\circ}C$ for 30 days was more than $70\%$ and that of plate count was less than of coliform group.