Weight Loss, Proximate and Microbial Properties of Fermented and Unfermented Sausages Produced from Snail and Beef Blends

Four different batches of sausages were produced from ground snail and beef blends at varying snail: beef ratios (100 : 0, 80 : 20, 60 : 40, 50 : 50) for batch S1 , S2 , S3 and S4 respectively. Another four samples of the same snail: beef ratio were produced and fermented.  All the sausage samples were cooked, roasted and then analyzed for quality characteristics. The proximate content showed significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) among samples. The range of moisture content was 18.54 - 21.81% with unfermented sausages having the highest moisture content, protein content range from 83.73 - 87.02% with fermented sausages having the highest protein content while the fat content ranged from 3.00 - 5.86% with unfermented sausages having the highest value. Cooking losses showed significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) from roasting losses. Microbial analysis showed that fermented sausages had the highest microbial load of (3.0 x 104 CFU/g). Sensory evaluation of the sausages revealed high mean overall acceptability scores for unfermented and roasted sausages. Generally, the products with 100% snail and 50% snail were most acceptable to the panelists. As such it was concluded that 50% beef or more could be replaced with snail in the production of healthy sausage roll.