Modeling changes in the quality attributes of couscous cooked with ohmic heating

Abstract

Kinetic studies on the quality alters of couscous are crucial to the suitable design of ohmic heating treatment. Hence, it was targeted to build mathematical models to forecast the changes in quality attributes of couscous cooked using ohmic heating (OH) in the present study. In addition, the average power and total energy for cooking couscous with OH at a voltage gradient of 17 V/cm were determined. Three dissimilar kinetic models—zero, first, and second—were fitted to the data. Our findings showed that, for the ohmic heating system, as cooking time increased, energy consumption increased while heating system efficacy declined. The best model to reflect the changes in color parameters was the second-order model, while the zero-order model best fit the experimental data observed for the cooking loss, moisture content, and weight increase (%). For all TPA parameters, however, neither model yielded the greatest fit.