Comparative Study of Effects of Hot Water and Steaming Blanching on Crisp Banana Qualities

Crisp banana processed by hot air drying combined puffing provides low volumetric shrinkage and high crisp texture, but crisp product has more brown colour. The hot water blanching and steaming pretreatments could reduce brown colour of puffed product. From previous reports, the comparative study of effects of hot water blanching and steaming pretreatments on crisp banana qualities were limited. Therefore, this work was interested in a comparative study of the effects of hot water blanching and steaming pretreatments on crisp banana. The fresh bananas were cross sectional sliced to 2.5 mm and then they were pretreated by hot water or steaming. After that, it was dried by hot air and puffed by hot air. The experimental results showed that both pretreatments by hot water and steaming could reduce the firmness of raw material structure, resulting in the larger volumetric and lower hardness of pretretment product than that of the non-pretreatment banana product. In addition, the both pretreatment also retarded browning reaction of crisp banana product as compared to non-pretreatment product. However, it was not observed the difference in qualities of both pretreatment crisp banana methods. Increasing puffing temperature provided lower hardness of product, however, the color of puffed banana was more browning. Therefore, the banana should be pretreated by hot water blanching or steaming before processing and using of puffing temperature not exceeding 170 oC.