Zeliha Keskin Alkaç^1,, İrem Dağoğlu², Fatih Ahmet Korkak³, Saibe Merve Kazdal⁴, Ayhan Dağ⁵

Acrylamide (AA) is a potentially harmful compound found especially in foods cooked at high temperatures. The formation of AA has been linked to various health problems, including cancer. This study investigates the effect of different thawing methods (microwave, refrigerator, and water immersion) and cooking methods (air frying and deep fat frying) on AA formation. Fish meat, chicken breast, thigh, and wing samples were used. The samples were air-fried and deep-fat fried after different thawing methods. AA was analyzed by gas chromatography -mass spectrophotometer (GC-MS). The acrylamide levels of the deep-fat-fried chicken meats ranged from n.d. (not detected) to 79.40±9.52μg/kg, whereas those of the air-fried chicken meats ranged from n.d. to 60.00±9.12 μg/kg. The acrylamide levels of the deep-fat-fried fish meats ranged from 60.00±9.98 to 64.40±4.93μg/kg, whereas those of the air-fried fish meats ranged from 50.00±9.12 to 60.75±6.75μg/kg. These results show that AA formation in fish and chicken meat was lower in air frying than in deep fat frying. This suggests that air frying could be a healthier alternative. On the other hand, the effectiveness of thawing methods is not significant, indicating that the use of various thawing methods does not have a significant effect on AA formation. These findings indicate that air frying is a promising method with the potential to produce healthy fried products in terms of AA formation.

acrylamide, fish, chicken, thawing, frying, GC-MS