Sailfish meat was cured in soy sauce with/without ginger juice and changes in hardness and protein profiles were investigated.
Fish meats were dipped into soy sauce with or without ginger juice or NaCl solution for 3 days at 4°C. Hardness of the cured meats was measured after cooking of them by texturometer, and the lowest value was obtained with meat cured with mixture of soy sauce and ginger juice. The non-protein nitrogen compounds were increased by the curing in soy sauce with ginger juice. The SDS-Polyacrylamide gel electrophoretic patterns showed that only the myosin heavy chain and actin of fish muscle cured in ginger juice added soy sauce decomposed to fragments with smaller molecular size during curing and this effect was disappeared by the cooking of ginger juice. These results suggest that the degradation of proteins by ginger proteases would be one of the factors to make meat tender during the curing.