Low-fat frying with infrared heating
Special Symposium - Innovations in Food Technology (LMC Congress)
Process & Product Innovation (Food-4a)
Keywords: infrared heating, low fat, potato, frozen
During the past 20 years, obesity among adults, young people and children has risen significantly and food consumption has been pointed out as an important cause. Deep fried breaded meat, fish and potato products are extensively consumed and often pointed out as unhealthy due to its high fat content. The frying process is responsible for the desirable surface characteristics of such products, such as colour, crust crispness and flavour. However, as a consequence of the frying process the surface of such products also absorb fat. The oil used for frying is usually high in saturated fats, and degrades during the frying process producing a large amount of undesirable and toxic compounds. Therefore there is a need for alternative sustainable processes to produce products with quality characteristics similar to deep fat frying but with low fat content.
Infrared (IR) heating, due to its heat transport mechanisms, alone or combined with air impingement is an effective method to produce products with surface characteristics similar to deep-fat products. The process may include addition of small amounts of high quality fat depending on the flavour required.
In this work infrared heating was applied to potato cakes coated with batter and breading. Near infrared heating with constant heat flux of 25 kW/m2 was tested in frozen and unfrozen potato cakes from 30s up 2½ minutes. The product temperature and kinetics of batter hardening and colour development were measured for both frozen and unfrozen potato cakes.
Infrared pre-frying of frozen bread coated products showed to be able to create products with characteristics similar to deep fried products although with a lower fat content. The replacement of the traditional deep frying process for the suggested infrared process may lead to environmental savings, such as low frying oil consumption and energy savings.
Presented Thursday 20, 09:50 to 10:05, in session Process & Product Innovation (Food-4a).
