ALGINATE GELS: II. STABILITY AT DIFFERENT PROCESSING CONDITIONS

Abstract

ABSTRACT Wet heating processes, such as boiling in water and steaming for different periods (5, 10, 20, 30, 45 and 60 min), were employed to know the stability of alginate gels along with obtaining the kinetics of textural parameters. A compression test up to a strain of 0.8 was employed on unprocessed and processed gels to know the different textural parameters (fracture force/energy, compression energy, peak stress, firmness and linear elastic limit) that characterized the mechanical behavior. These gels are heat stable and thermoirreversible in nature, exhibiting a marginal decrease in volume after the wet heat treatments. The order of kinetics of textural parameters is less than 1 and exhibits fractional values. Fracture force/energy, compression energy and peak stress decreased with the time of treatment, whereas firmness and strain at failure increased. A three‐parameter nonlinear model has been proposed to predict the force values during compression of food gels. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSThe alginate gels along with fruit and vegetable extracts can form a gel with adequate solid characteristics to be suitable as a convenience food. These gels can maintain their integrity and show resistance to wet heat treatments, like boiling in water and steaming, such that they are suitable for the purpose of product development along with other food ingredients, which requires further processing steps like blanching, pasteurization and sterilization.