  It is shown that the strange quark mass undergoes a first order transition in
a generalized 3 flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) Lagrangian which includes a
complete set of explicit chiral symmetry breaking interactions. This transition
occurs in a moderate chemical potential region $\mu \sim 400$ MeV, in addition
to the usual chiral transition associated with the light quark sector. This
favors the formation of stable strange quark matter at chemical potentials
which are considerably lower than the ones discussed in the literature. The
reason for this behavior is discussed.
