OPTIMIZATION OF PROCESSING PARAMETERS AND QUALITY ATTRIBUTES OF FRIED COCOYAM CHIPS

Abstract

The influence of frying temperature and time on the quality characteristics of deep-fat fried cocoyam chips was investigated using Central Composite Design (CCD) in Response Surface Methodology (RSM) consisting of two independent variables (frying temperature and time). The dependent variables were moisture content, oil content, colour, texture and shrinkage. The cocoyam tubers were cut into uniform slice of 3 mm thickness and fried at different temperature (150 – 190 ^oC) and time (5 – 9 minutes). Frying conditions significantly influenced all dependent variables at p<0.05. Coefficients of determination (R²) of the models ranged from 0.891 to 0.998 which indicated that the variables were adequately fitted to the regression equation and could highly predict the quality attributes of deep fried cocoyam chips. The optimum conditions were frying temperature of 190 ^oC and frying time of 7.59 minutes. This gave 7.85% moisture content, 11.59% oil content, 63.81 colour, 5.32 N crispness and 13.14% shrinkage.