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ABSTRACT
The effects of vacuum infrared radiation (VIR) pre-drying on the microwave-assisted vacuum frying (MVF) potato chips were investigated to study its possibility of decreasing the oil content of fried potato chips. The moisture evaporation, oil content, texture, color, surface temperature, shrinkage, and sensory analysis of fried products were evaluated. Results showed that the VIR pre-drying significantly reduced the oil content in MVF products, a decrease from 22.38 to 13.49 g oil/100 g dry solid. The application of VIR pre-drying accelerated the dehydration rate, and increased the mechanical breaking force measured with a texture analyzer with 20–30 min pre-drying. The VIR pre-drying resulted in an increase in the total color change and the shrinkage of MVF potato chips. The sensory analysis showed that the proper duration of VIR pre-drying would achieve a higher consumers’ acceptance. Comparing with the current industrial applications, vacuum frying, and atmospheric deep-fat frying, the combined VIR and MVF technology would be an alternative frying method for producing healthier fried products with less oil content and high quality.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation Program of China (Contract No. 31671864), China Key Research Program (Contract No. 2016YFD0400704-5), Jiangsu Province (China) “Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control” Industry Development Program, Jiangsu Province (China) Infrastructure Project (Contract No. BM2014051) all of which enabled us to carry out this study.