Relationship between Inherent Cooking Rate and Warner-Bratzler Shear Force of Pork Chops Cooked to Two Degrees of Doneness

The objective was to test inherent cooking rate differences on tenderness values of boneless pork chops when exogenous factors known to influence cooking rate were controlled. Temperature and elapsed time were monitored during cooking for all chops. Cooking rate was calculated as the change in °C per minute of cooking time. Warner-Bratzler shear force (WBSF) was measured on chops cooked to either 63 °C or 71 °C. Slopes of regression lines and coefficients of determination between cooking rate and tenderness values for both degrees of doneness (DoD) were calculated. Shear force values decreased as cooking rate increased regardless of DoD (p ≤ 0.05), however changes in tenderness due to increased cooking rate were limited (β1 = −0.201 for 63 °C; β1 = −0.217 for 71 °C). Cooking rate only explained 3.2% and 5.4% of variability in WBSF of chops cooked to 63 °C and 71 °C, respectively. Cooking loss explained the most variability in WBSF regardless of DoD (partial R² = 0.09–0.12). When all factors were considered, a stepwise regression model explained 20% of WBSF variability of chops cooked to 63 °C and was moderately predictive of WBSF (model R² = 0.34) for chops cooked to 71 °C. Overall, cooking rate had minimal effect on pork chop tenderness.