Effect of some hydrocolloids on coating performance of egg base coated fried yam chips.

Abstract

The influence of xanthan gum (XG), carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and gum tragacanth (GT) mixed with either whole-egg or egg- white at 0.5-1.5% concentrations as coatings in fried yam chips was studied. The parameters studied include coating pick-up (CPU) of the chips prior to frying, cooked yield (CY) and frying loss (FL) of coated fried chips. Egg content (EC), Hydrocolloid type (HT) and concentration (HC) had significant (p<0.05) effect on all the parameters studied. Xanthan gum conferred highest CPU and CY, and least FL. Increasing HC significantly increased the CPU, CY and reduced FL for the coated fried samples. Chips coated with egg-white plus hydrocolloid showed higher CPU, CY and lower FL compared with that from whole. CPU was found to be correlated positively with CY (0.986) and negatively with FL (-0.920) (p ≤ 0.01). Polynomial regression model was the best to predict the effect of CPU on CY (0.888≤ r2 ≤0.976) and FL (0.733≤ r2≤0.865). Highly significant interactive effect of HT and HC (p≤0.001), and EC (p≤0.01) underscores the need to conduct further research to determine the optimum combination for reduced frying loss in order to ensure economy of processing.