Innovative vegetables-processed cheese: I. Physicochemical, rheological and sensory characteristics

Abstract

The food industries have a high demand for new products that meet consumer needs for a healthy lifestyle, where functional food enriched using the plant ingredients plays an important role. So, this study aimed to improve the public healthful characteristics of processed cheese and to examine the impact of fortification with different vegetables powder blend (mushroom, potato, squash, carrot, green bean, green pea, celery, leek, dill and parsley) on processed cheese using four formulations 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10% ratios. Changes in physic-chemical compositional characterizations of formulated processed cheese (FPC) were checked at fresh and during refrigerated storage (5±1 °C) for three months to assess their chemical, rheological, textural and organoleptic properties. The obtained results of FPC samples have higher in dry matter, protein, fiber and carbohydrates compared to the control cheese. The addition of these plants is acceptable to the consumer and can contribute to the development a novel and safe processed cheese types without affecting the overall acceptability, proved to have excellent compositional and functional properties, where the ratios of 5 and 7.5% recorded the best FPC samples.