As a key species in the Southern Ocean, Antarctic krill is hailed as the world""s largest undeveloped animal protein reservoir. Nutritional analysis reveals that its dry-basis protein content is as high as 65%, with an amino acid score (AAS) significantly superior to that of traditional animal proteins, demonstrating substantial potential for food development. However, its endogenous low-temperature autolytic enzymes trigger rapid autolysis, leading to an excessively short processing window, which severely limits its processability. There is an urgent need to address this key scientific issue through innovative processing technologies. High-moisture extrusion (HME) technology induces directional reorganization of the protein matrix via thermomechanical energy conversion, enabling the formation of anisotropic fibrous structures under moisture conditions exceeding 40%. Compared to conventional thermal processing, this technology offers the following advantages: (1) minimized nutrient loss due to reduced heat exposure time; (2) shear-induced biomimetic alignment of myofibrils imparting meat-like texture; (3) synergistic regulation of raw material formulation and process parameters enabling precise design of product texture; and (4) inactivation of endogenous autolytic enzymes during HME heating, thereby inhibiting autolysis in Antarctic krill. These characteristics make HME an ideal choice for developing novel marine protein-based meat analogues. In the study presented in this chapter, we successfully prepared HME-textured Antarctic krill meat (HMEAKM) with fibrous meat-like structure and favorable morphology using high-moisture texturization technology with Antarctic krill, wheat protein, yeast protein, and konjac glucomannan. The study confirmed that HMEAKM possesses outstanding nutritional quality and can serve as an ideal substitute for traditional livestock and poultry meat. However, high-moisture texturized products have high water activity, making them prone to microbial growth and unfavorable biochemical reactions, resulting in a short shelf life and difficulties in ambient storage and long-distance transportation, which limits their commercial promotion. Drying is a key post-processing step to address these issues. Through drying, not only can product shelf life be extended and stability improved, but product diversification and added value can also be achieved. The drying process of HMEAKM involves simultaneous heat and mass transfer, constituting a complex physicochemical process. Water removal inhibits microbial activity while also inducing a series of changes in the physical, chemical, and structural properties of HMEAKM, directly affecting the final product quality. Currently, research on high-moisture texturized proteins, both domestically and internationally, primarily focuses on raw material formulation and process parameter optimization, while studies on the impact of subsequent drying processes on product quality are still lacking. In particular, there is a scarcity of in-depth investigations into the mechanisms by which different drying methods affect quality. To address this, this study systematically compared the effects of four drying methods—hot air drying (HAD), cold air drying (CAD), infrared drying (IFD), and microwave drying (MVD)—on the quality characteristics of HMEAKM, aiming to elucidate their underlying mechanisms and identify the optimal method. The results indicate that the drying method plays a decisive role in the product""s microstructure, texture, protein structure and functional properties, and water distribution. Specifically, MVD, leveraging its unique internal and external heating mechanism, ensured extremely high drying efficiency while effectively avoiding surface hardening, promoting the formation of a porous, loose, honeycomb-like microstructure within the sample. This resulted in the lowest hardness, best elasticity, and highest degree of fibrillation among the products. In contrast, IFD, due to strong surface absorption of radiant energy, led to rapid formation of a dense, hard crust on the sample surface, causing significant macroscopic shrinkage. This resulted in extremely high product hardness and the poorest elasticity and chewiness. As traditional convective drying methods, HAD and CAD are relatively mild but suffer from long drying cycles and low efficiency. Samples generally exhibited shrinkage; however, they better preserved product elasticity and chewiness. Among them, CAD helped retain more bound and immobilized water, while HAD induced further protein unfolding and significant fluorescence quenching. At the protein structure level, IFD and MVD caused more pronounced denaturation of secondary structures, manifested as the conversion of α-helices to β-sheets. All four drying methods disrupted the tertiary structure of proteins to varying degrees, leading to the exposure of internal tryptophan residues to hydrophilic environments. Regarding chemical bonds, HAD samples had the highest free sulfhydryl content but failed to effectively form disulfide bonds, whereas MVD likely led to the lowest free sulfhydryl content due to rapid protein aggregation. Rheological property analysis showed that HAD and CAD samples exhibited higher initial apparent viscosity, whereas IFD and MVD, due to their rapid and intense energy output, inhibited the formation of molecular cross-linking networks, resulting in lower viscosity. LF-NMR water analysis further confirmed the differential effects of drying methods on water states: CAD was most conducive to maintaining bound and immobilized water, MVD samples retained relatively more internal free water, and IFD fundamentally altered the water binding state. Comprehensive analysis suggests that MVD demonstrates the most significant and overall advantages in terms of drying efficiency, formation of excellent porous structure, achievement of desirable texture, and enhancement of protein solubility. Although IFD is efficient, the surface hardening and texture deterioration it causes are major drawbacks. HAD and CAD, being mild processes, have merits in preserving certain ordered protein structures and rheological properties, but their inefficiency and structural shrinkage are limitations. Therefore, this study ultimately selected MVD as the foundational method for subsequent in-depth research and industrial development. This systematic investigation fills a research gap in the post-drying treatment of high-moisture texturized proteins, provides crucial theoretical basis and data support for the industrial drying processing of HMEAKM, and establishes a solid scientific foundation for the secondary processing and quality control of texturized protein products.