• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.296-302
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• 2019

Ganjang-gejang (soy sauce-marinated crab) is a ready-to-eat (RTE) seafood and is also one of the most popular traditional dishes in Korea. It is generally prepared by washing raw blue crabs and then preserving them in soy sauce. Since this process does not involve cooking or any treatment with heat, it is difficult to control the microbiological quality of the final product. Thus, the objectives of this study were to compare the efficacies of various sanitizers in eliminating microorganisms on raw blue crab during the washing step and to evaluate the effectiveness of chitosan on the inhibition of microbial growth in the ganjang-gejang during storage. The raw blue crabs were submerged in chlorinated water (50 mg/L), peracetic acid (40 mg/L), acetic acid (5%) and lactic acid (5%) for 10 min at $25^{\circ}C$, respectively. The blue crabs treated with 5% acetic acid were marinated with soy sauce containing 0.5 and 1% of soluble chitosan, followed by storing them at 4 and $12^{\circ}C$ for up to 30 days. Results show that 5% acetic acid reduced the microbial populations on the blue crabs by 1.5 log CFU/g, which was significantly higher than those of other treatments. Based on these results, 5% acetic acid was selected for the washing step. The microbial populations of all ganjang-gejang samples significantly increased to about 8.0 CFU/g at $12^{\circ}C$ for 7 days. At $4^{\circ}C$, the microbial populations of the products containing 1% chitosan increased by about 2.9 CFU/g for 20 days, which were significantly lower than those (4.2-4.5 log CFU/g) of the products without and with 0.5% chitosan. Thus, these results suggest that 5% acetic acid washing of raw blue crabs and the addition of 1% chitosan in ganjang-gejang could improve the microbiological quality of the final products under refrigerated condition.