23.23 ± 0.24%; crude ash, 1.01 ± 0.13%) were removed from chilled
carcasses at a commercial slaughtering house 24 h postmortem. The
porcine LTL muscleswere cut into 3 cm-thick steaks (n = 80) of similar
weight (195.2 ± 1.4 g). Each sample was individually placed in a
polyethylene plastic bag, divided into four groups (20 steaks per each
group). A refrigerator (RF903ETPETM, Samsung, Korea) was prepared
for cold and freeze storage, and the refrigerator's capacity is 901 L
(cold room: 349 L, freeze room: 552 L) and it has a French door. This
refrigerator's cold room and freeze room temperatures can be adjusted
from 0 to 5 °C and from −17 to −23 °C, respectively. Before storing
the samples, the temperatures of the cold room and freeze room were
adjusted to 1 °C and −20.0 °C, respectively, and a thermocouple thermometer
(TM-9126, Lutron electronic enterprise Co., LTD, Taiwan) was
used to check the temperature every 2 h. The samples were arranged
irregularly in the cold roomand the freeze room and theywere arranged
not to overlap or contact each other. The samples treated by two different
conditions: cold storage at 1.0 ± 0.5 °C (C1 and C2) for 48 h; freezing
at −20 ± 0.5 °C (T1 and T2) for 24 h and thawing at 1.0 ± 0.5 °C
for 24 h. After 48 h of storage, exudates were removed from sample
groups C2 and T2, and all samples were stored at 1.0 ± 0.5 °C for
5 days. Five steaks per each group at different storage days were tested.
A diagram for sample preparation was presented in Fig. 1