Preparation of organic tofu using organic compatible magnesium chloride incorporated with polysaccharide coagulants

Abstract

Organic tofu using organic compatible coagulants of magnesium chloride and three polysaccharides including carrageenan, guar gum and gum Arabic were generated. For MgCl2 coagulated tofu, carrageenan significantly increased the hardness from 969.5g to 1210.5g whereas guar gum (0.6g) decreased the hardness to 505.5g. Interestingly, gypsum and guar gum (0.6g) increased the yield of tofu significantly. These organic compatible coagulants didn’t affect most of 7S and 11S protein subunits. Importantly, the overall-acceptability of organic tofu prepared with MgCl2 combined with guar gum or gypsum was almost the same as conventional tofu made with gymsum while having more beany-flavour. Among these organic coagulants, tofu made from 0.6g guar gum and MgCl2 mixture was the most similar to that coagulated by conventional gypsum. Thus this mixture is promising as coagulant for making organic tofu.