Cooking Loss and Shear Force. At 24 h postmortem,
the entire pectoralis majors were weighed, placed
into individual plastic bags, and vacuum sealed. Subsequently,
the vacuum-sealed samples were cooked in
a water bath kettle set at 85°C until an internal temperature
of 77°C. After cooking, residual moisture was
absorbed from each breast with 2 filter papers and the
samples were reweighed. Cooking loss was calculated
as a percentage: [(raw weight − cooked weight)/raw
weight] × 100, as described by Schilling et al. (2008).
Then, cooked breasts were cooled to room temperature,
from which at the same location rectangular-shaped
samples (1 × 1 × 2 cm) were removed to measure tenderness
using a TA-XT2 texture analyzer (Stable Micro
Systems, Godalming, UK) with a Warner-Bratzler
blade (code HDP/BS, Stable Micro Systems). Shear
force was measured perpendicular to the