Micronization pretreatments for reducing the cooking time of lentils
1998
Scanlon, M.G. | Malcolmson, L.J. | Arntfield, S.D. | Watts, B. | Ryland, D. | Prokopowich, D.J.
For many grain and grain legume crops, a pretreatment step is often employed prior to processing to improve the quality of the final product. The pretreatment may be tempering, where a uniform specified moisture content in the grain is desired, or soaking, where moisture content is high and unevenly distributed. This study evaluated the effect of moisture contents and reagents as potential pretreatments for micronization (infrared heat treatment) of lentils, the objective being to reduce lentil cooking times. The texture of over-, under- and optimally cooked lentils was defined by sensory methods and by peak force values at 40% compression. As cooking time increased, sensory scores for hardness, chewiness and particle size decreased, as did peak force values. The peak force for optimally cooked lentils receiving no pretreatment was the control used to assess the effectiveness of a given pretreatment. The pretreatments studied were soaking of lentils, tempering of lentils to 20 or 40% moisture with water alone, and tempering to 20 or 40% moisture with solutions of various reagents: sodium salts of carbonate, bicarbonate, phosphate, tripolyphosphate and EDTA, and mixtures of citric and ascorbic acids. For tempering pretreatments, cooking time was reduced as moisture increased, but it was only at 40% moisture that added reagents were effective in reducing lentil cooking times. It was postulated that free water must be available in the cotyledon to allow reagents in the tempering water to reduce cooking time beyond that attainable with water alone. Potential reagents for tempering solutions used as successful micronization pretreatments were 2% sodium tripolyphosphate, mixtures of 1% citric and 2% ascorbic acid, and 150 ppm disodium EDTA.
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