Abstract:
As the eating patterns are changing day by day, snack foods play very
important role in the diet of the modern consumer. Extrusion cooking has been used
increasingly in the production of food and food ingredients such as breakfast cereals,
baby foods, snacks, meat and cheese analogues, as well as modified starches which
have a pivotal role in the food industry. With the increased demand of extruded RTE
snacks in the modern food industries, an extruded product was developed and
standardised with starch based food products such as rice, cassava and banana. The
raw materials mixed in different proportions of rice: banana and rice:cassava:banana
were extruded under various process parameters viz. die temperatures, extruder screw
speeds, feed rates and feed moisture content. Quality evaluation of the developed 96
extrudates along with control was done for standard engineering properties including
physical, functional, textural and machine parameters. MAP of the extrudates were
carried out in 400 gauge aluminum bags and kept for 3 months period for shelf life
studies. Based on puffing characteristics, 17 samples were selected as best products.
At the end of storage studies, the quality evaluation of these extrudates in terms of
textural and organoleptic properties were analysed and yielded satisfactory results.
The subjective analysis with good overall acceptability was also noted. The study
concluded that rice: cassava: banana combination of R 10 :C 80 :B 10 with extrusion done at
temperatures of 180oC to 200oC at higher screw speed (100 and 120 rpm) could be
considered optimum. The proposed product technology was found feasible with 37%
IRR with a calculated unit cost of ₹ 3/- per 20g pack. So this product will be a snack
cum breakfast kit for the consumers with a balanced mix of proteins, carbohydrates,
vitamins and minerals which will ensure nutritional security and food safety.
