Effect of various pretreatments on quality of Ready-To-Eat (RTE) carrot shreds

Ready-To-Eat (RTE) foods are gaining the popularity among consumer day by day due to its appealing factors such as convenience in use, attractive appearance and texture. Carrot is a very popular root crop grown all over the world for its delicious edible roots. Dehydration is most useful technique to prepare Ready-To-Eat and shelf stable products with longer shelf life. Osmotic dehydration is preferred over other drying methods due to its quality retention value in final product. Mass transfer phenomenon is affected due to different pre-treatments before osmosis. Therefore various pretreatments such as steam blanching, freezing and thawing were carried out before osmotic dehydration. Solid gain, water loss, texture and color were assessed in order to evaluate its effect on RTE carrot shreds. During investigation, it was found that pretreatments on RTE carrot shreds before osmotic dehydration enhanced sugar gain and water loss. Solid gain in various treatments was varied from 34.34 to 40.66, while water loss ranged between 20.30 to 27.39. Colour of RTE shreds was evaluated in terms of L*, a*, b* valued L* (40.45-51.88), a* (28.32-34.14), and b* (32.54-35.90). Texture (hardness) of RTE shreds was found between 4.503 to 7.582 N. Sensory parameters such as color, texture, flavour and taste were increased with increase in freezing time but these all parameters are higher for steam blanching pre-treatment for 2 min before osmatic dehydration. It was observed that there was nonsignificant difference was observed for refrigerated and ambient thawing on the overall acceptability of carrot shreds.