The effects of konjac (0%–0.4% w/w) and xanthan (0%–0.4% w/w) gums on pH, sensory (taste, spreadability, firmness), and textural characteristics (hardness, adhesiveness, cohesiveness, springiness, gumminess, chewiness) of spreadable processed cheese were investigated. The central composite design (CCD) was used and the data were analyzed using response surface methodology (RSM). The results showed that adding konjac and xanthan reduced the pH of the cheese. Regarding the sensory characteristics, the results indicated that increasing the xanthan and konjac gums increased the taste and firmness score, while the spreadability score was decreased. The textual profile analysis test showed that increasing the konjac and xanthan gums increased firmness, cohesiveness, gumminess, and chewiness of cheese. On the other hand, adding konjac and xanthan gums reduced the cheese adhesiveness. The different values of konjac had no significant effects on the springiness, but cheese springiness increased significantly (p ≤ .05) by increasing the amount of xanthan.
Practical applications
In the production of processed cheese, phosphate‐emulsifying salts play a major role in the manufacture of a uniform product with appropriate physical and organoleptic characteristics; however, excessive consumption of these salts may lead to the many diseases in humans; therefore, to improving the product quality and also cost reduction, various types of hydrocolloids are used. For example konjac and xanthan have potential to improve the sensory and textural characteristics of processed cheese and use as ingredient in formulation of spreadable processed cheese.
In this study, the effect of milk protein concentrate (MPC), cheese whey powder (CWP) and konjac gum (KG) on physicochemical and rheological properties of labane was investigated. Physicochemical results showed that increasing MPC and decreasing CWP decreased pH (after fifth day) and syneresis. The results of the combination of back extrusion and texture profile analysis indicated that increasing KG significantly increased hardness, adhesiveness and adhesiveness force especially for samples with high amount of CWP but increasing MPC and decreasing CWP decreased cohesiveness in samples with high amount of KG. Strain sweep test of labane indicated that all sample had gel‐like structure at 1 Hz and 20°C. Rheological results also showed that increasing KG significantly increased G′LVE, G″LVE, γc, τy, τf, and Gf especially for samples with high amount of CWP. At the optimized conditions, the predicted responses were determined as MPC 1.47%, CWP 6.52%, and KG 0.18%.
Practical applications
The physicochemical and rheological properties of products, such as labane, play an important role in processing and consumer acceptability. The determination of the optimum ingredients in formulation provides economic benefits and it can be useful for the food industries that want to use gums as thickening and stabilizing agents in the formulation of food products such as labane. Also mixture‐process variable experiments are a quite effective mathematical approach for the optimization of the processing variables containing mixture components and process factors. So, it could be used efficiently to model the labane formulation.
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