Effect of traditional cooking methods on some nutritional aspects of camel meat

Camel meat is known as a low fat source of red meat in human diet while it is comparable to the other sources of red meat in terms of many nutritional points of view. The present study aimed to investigate how fat and iron content of camel meat are affected by the traditional cooking methods currently is use in Iran. pouching, frying and grilling were applied in this study to process the camel meat samples. The time and the temperature were selected according to the habitual of the Iranian households. Moisture, ash and cooking loss were determined using standard methods while the method of Folch was adapted to measure the fat content. Total iron was measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometer at 248 nm and heme Iron was determined using colorimetric method at 640 nm. Boiling and frying resulted in the least and most fatty material in the cooked camel meat respectively. The changes of the ash content reflected the effectiveness of grilling and frying in reserving the mineral content of cooked camel meat, while about 40% of ash was shown to be lost during boiling. Despite no significant difference P>o.o5 in total iron content between the three applied cooking methods, it underwent significant changes from raw meat to the cooked ones, Heme Iron concentration, instead, appeared to be significantly different between trail in a way that grilling led to the most heme iron content. In grilling, increase in fat content is less than that of other cooking methods. Also, the highest available iron content can be provided by grilling comparing to the other trials. Shorter cooking time period and less internal temperature of the pieces of samples in grilling may give rise to what was resulted in this study.