DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF PROCESS PROTOCOL FOR VACUUM FRIED CARROT CHIPS (DAUCUS CAROTA L)

Abstract

Carrots are highly nutritious vegetable, which can be consumed in raw and processed form throughout the world. Carrot plays a vital role in the development and protection of human body. Carrot contains vitamins viz., B1(Thiamine), B2(Riboflavin), B6(Niacin) and B12 (Cobalamin) besides rich in source of β- carotene and dietary fibre which are helpful to prevent cancer and other dreadful diseases occur in human body. In Kerala state, carrot production is very limited, but its consumption is more. The postharvest losses of carrot were estimated as 18- 20%. The development of value-added products from carrot was an idealistic solution to reduce the postharvest losses by adopting new processing technologies. At present, due to consumer’s awareness, there is a lot of demand for healthy and tasty snack products with less oil content which provide good health. In this context, investigation on processing technologies focus on producing high quality fried products with less oil content and good textural property. The technology of vacuum frying is a best option for the production of novel snacks which fulfil the consumers demand and meet nutritious requirements. Vacuum frying is a novel technology, in which the food is heated under lower temperature and pressure(<6kPa). Vacuum frying lowers the water activity, oil content, retains the color and preserve nutrients in the fried product. The batch type vacuum frying system consists of two chambers viz., frying chamber (3kg capacity) and oil storage chamber (30-35L capacity). The refined palm oil was used for vacuum frying and de-oiling was done at 1000 rpm for 10 min. After every batch of vacuum frying, the oil was collected for quality analysis. Prior to the research, the physico-chemical properties of raw carrot (Ooty-1) was determined. The pre-treatments viz., blanching, blanching cum drying, blanching cum freezing, freezing and gum coating were optimized based on the quality of vacuum fried carrot chips. The freezing pre-treatment obtained the best results among other pre-treatments in terms of less oil content (14.48 %), water activity (0.214), moisture content (2.67%), hardness (1.282 N) and red color retention of a* value (22.85). The standardization of process parameters were done using RSM (CCRD) based on the qualitycharacteristics of VF-carrot chips. The process parameters seected in this study were frying temperature (100,110 and 120 0 C), frying pressure (11,13 and 15 kPa) and frying time (16,18 and 20 min). The optimum operating conditions of vacuum frying viz., frying temperature, vacuum pressure and frying time were found to be 100°C, 11 kPa and 16 min respectively. At optimum operating conditions of 100°C, 11 kPa and 16 min, the quality parameters were oil content (11.31%), bulk density(0.873 g/cm 3 ), true density(1.714 g/cm 3 ), moisture content(3.28%), water activity (0.384), hardness (1.31 N),thickness expansion (60.42%), L*(43.48), a*( 14.36) b*(28.12) and energy content(1021 KJ/100g). Packaging and storage studies were conducted for the treatments which had high sensory score. The laminated aluminium flexible pouch with N 2 gas filling was found to be the best packaging technique to enhance the shelf life of VF carrot chips to a storage period of 4 months. The oil quality parameters viz., total polar compounds (TPC), viscosity, peroxide, free fatty acids (FFA) etc were within the allowable limits even after 40 batches of vacuum frying. The total production cost of 1kg of vacuum fried carrot chips was found to be Rs. 355/-.