Pork is an important meat in China, and storage via freezing is commonly used for long storage periods. Thus, thawing is required prior to processing; however, traditional thawing methods are time consuming and severely limit the production efficiency. Compared to traditional thawing methods, microwave thawing has outstanding advantages such as fast heating speeds as well as decreased time and energy consumption. In this paper, a household variable frequency microwave oven was used to thaw pork loin. Several thawing procedures were optimized and compared with the existing defrost mode of a microwave oven, and the gravy leakage rate, color, and texture characteristics were analyzed. Two optimized thawing procedures were found to provide a better thawing effect than the existing defrost mode of the microwave oven. The samples were completely thawed, exhibited a low gravy leakage rate, and maintained the color of fresh meat. The pork loin thawed using the optimized microwave thawing method exhibited a smaller temperature difference, better textural properties, and a shorter cooking time.
