Development and Evaluation of Complementary Porridge Blends From Germinated Maize, Soybean and Sweet Potato

Abstract

Porridge is an important complementary food in many developing countries and it is mainly prepared from different blended flour. It is however, relatively cheap or inexpensive, being made from local available crop. In line with this, research was initiated to produce porridge from formulated with germinated maize, soybean and sweet potato flour to investigate the possibilities of improving the proximate composition, functional and sensory properties of complementary porridge. Nine -formulations of the composite flour were prepared using mixture design using Minitab software of version 16with a range of Germinated maize 30-70%, soybean20-40% and sweet potato 10-30%. Results showed significance difference (p<0.05) in bulk density of the composite flour. High blending ratio of soybean increased Moisture content, ash content and the sensory property like appearance taste and over all acceptability, whereas sweet potato increased the water absorption capacity of blended flour, oil absorption capacity blended flour and also increase aroma, taste of sensory property of porridge .The overall optimum point of all parameters are (moisture content4.4-5.06%, ash content1.8-5.4%, water absorption capacity200-131%, oil absorption capacity170.3-109 %, bulk density 0.4-0.2g/ml, and overall acceptance received hedonic ratings 4-4.75 were found in a range of germinated maize 30-70%, soybean 20-40% and sweet potato 10-20%. Therefore the study will be beneficial to most of the society who use porridge as important complementary food for his children.