104C-14 |
Improve quality of tomato paste using whole tomato in a continuous processor |
Q. XU, P. E. Nelson, and L. F. Chen. Dept. of Food Science, Purdue Univ., 745 Agriculture Mall Dr., West Lafayette, IN 47907-2009 High quality tomato paste is manufactured from tomato juice obtained from a hot break process. The tomato juice is subsequently concentrated to a paste by evaporation. It is a common problem in tomato industries that the juice reconstituted from the paste usually retains only 30% to 40% of its original consistency. In order to compensate this loss, more paste or paste with a high consistency is required in the recipe for production of finished tomato products. Developments of new methods to increase consistency of tomato juice before evaporation and to avoid loss of consistency due to evaporation can result in a big saving for tomato industries. A new “breaking” process using a continuous processor could inactivate enzymes in a short time and simultaneously extract more pectin and hemicelluloses from pomace. As a result, this new process increased the overall viscosity and consistency of tomato juice and paste. Further addition of pomace, after size reduction, to tomato paste also increased the consistency of tomato juice and paste, but it made the paste a duller red color. It is hypothesized that during the drying and size reduction process, the interactions between pectin, hemicelluloses, and fibers resulted in a matrix that interacted with tomato paste to gave the characteristic high consistency. In tomato industries, pomace is a by-products of the process. The pomace still contains a large quantity of residual hemicelluloses and pectin, and also retains 85% of the tomato pigments. Utilization of whole tomato for production of tomato paste can add value to tomato by-product, eliminate wastes, increase the quality of tomato paste, and increase the content and bioavailability of lycopene in the tomato products.
Session 104C, Fruit & Vegetable Products: Vegetables (Processed)
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