Preservation and quality evaluation of ready to cook vegetarian soup incorporated with dehydrated soy bean (Glycine max) powder under blast freezing

Abstract

Formulation and development of nutritious complementary foods from locally and readily available raw materials have received a lot of attentions, recently. The growth of vegetable industry as a commercial proposition is largely depends on allied enterprises like storage, processing and marketing. Food production is increasing, it is essential to sustain increased production besides nutritional standard of the people. The present research work aimed to prepare and preserve a supplement vegetarian soup mix with dehydrated soy bean powder under two different freezing conditions and evaluate its chemical, physical, microbial, sensorial properties during storage. Vegetarian soup mix (VSM) was prepared by using soya powder, carrot, pumpkin, and spinach. The product was frozen under blast freezing (-18 º C) and normal freezing (20ºC) and stored at -200C. The storage quality was evaluated for 4 months. Total Plate Count (TPC), physicochemical characteristics such as firmness, colour, total soluble solid (TSS) and sensory properties using 5 point hedonic scale were evaluated. In VSM, firmness of carrot and pumpkin were 30.86±1.67 and 24.03±1.01 respectively at the end of four months of storage. Total plate count and the TSS of VSM were 6.41x102 CFU/g and 5.52±0.05 respectively under blast freezing. Colour of the VSM was not significantly different (p<0.05) among treatments. VSM under blast freezing exhibited excellent sensory quality attributes at the end of storage