Effect of pretreatment, drying method and cooking medium on yield, quality and storability of potato sticks

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the unique and most potential crops have high productivity, supplementing major food requirement in the world. It is rich in carbohydrates, proteins, phosphorus, calcium, vitamin C, β-carotene and has high protein calorie ratio. Drying is a process of removing water from food and agricultural products constitutes a significant portion of the processing activity for persons working in the food and agricultural processing industries.The frying is a process, in which physical, chemical and oreganoleptic properties of food changed, the main goal of deep fat frying is to maintain tenderized and crispy shapes. Oil content is one of the important quality attributes in fried products. In the present investigation drying and frying characteristics of potato sticks treated with Control (T1), blanching Citric acid @ 0.5% (T2), blanching Potassium metabisulfite @ 0.5% (T3), blanching Citric acid 0.5% + Potassium meta-bisulfite @ 0.5% (T4), Blanching (3-4 min) at 95 °C (T5) and dried under sun drying and tray drying and to study the frying kinetics and sensory during storage was done. Moisture content (% db) of potato sticks were found 497.01 before drying operation which last up to 6.50 % for sun drying and 5.67 % in case of tray drying. During sun drying it took about 10 to 11 hours to dry the different pretreated samples completely while in tray drying it took about 6 to 8 hours.During sun drying maximum % mass reductions (82.25) was observed in Sample T2 and T3, same things was observed in tray drying; while maximum % water loss (98.69) was observed in Sample T3during sun drying and in tray drying it was observed in Sample T3 but value was increased to 98.86. During frying of dried samples in mustard oil, maximum weight gain % for sun dried samples was found 15.49 in sampleT3 and for tray dried samples it was 16.90in sampleT2. During the phsico-chemical evaluation of fried samplesmaximum ascorbic acid content for sun dried samples was found 12.48 mg/100 gm and 12.44 mg/100 gm for tray dried samples in T4.Maximum ash content (%) for sun dried samples was found 2.15 % and for tray dried sample sit was 2.13 observed in sampleT1 at 0 day of storage.All the sensory parameters like colour, texture, flavor and overall acceptability attributes of fried samples dried under sun drying was found maximum for T4 at 0 days. Same pattern was seen for tray dried samples.