Mitigation of acrylamide in baked potato chips by vacuum baking and combined conventional and vacuum baking processes

Abstract

Consumers tend to reduced-fat products recently due to health concerns, which create a need to design reduced-fat products either changing the recipes or the processes. In the last decade, baking was introduced to reformulated potato chips production to low-fat chips; however it might lead to higher acrylamide formation due to increased processing time. In this study, vacuum baking and combined conventional and vacuum baking processes were introduced as new baking technologies to mitigate acrylamide in baked reformulated potato chips. The acrylamide reduction in vacuum-baked potato chips ranged from 72 to 98% when compared with conventional-baked one (6 min, 200 °C) whose moisture content (4.83%) was similar to all vacuum- (4.07%–4.77%) and combined-baked samples (4.42%–4.57%). The surface browning was significantly different (p < 0.05) during vacuum baking compared to others due to the difference of the heat transfer in the corresponding ovens. Higher L* and lower a* values were observed in vacuum- and combined-baked chips compared to conventional ones. Sensory analysis showed that vacuum-baked samples were more appreciated than the others in texture and overall acceptability (p < 0.05). Vacuum and combined processes might be considered as alternative baking technologies for safer reformulated potato chips.