Standardization of Process Parameters for Ready-to-Eat Crab Koftha in Indigenous Polymer-Coated Tin-Free Steel Cans

Abstract

Koftha is a traditional North Indian food consisting of whole cooked potatoes in spicy gravy. Fried crab balls with koftha medium was packed in indigenous polymer-coated easy openend tin-free steel cans of 307 ×109 size and processed at 121.1oC to three different F0 values of 5, 6 and 7 with cook values of 61, 75 and 78 min respectively. The fried and processed crab balls were evaluated by sensory analysis, instrumental texture and colour analysis. Even though the processed cans for all three F0 values were found to be commercially sterile, the product processed to F0 6 was found to be ideal with regard to all sensory attributes. The one way analysis of variance of all the instrumental textural characteristics viz., hardness 1, hardness 2, cohesiveness, springiness, gumminess and chewiness of different thermal process treatments were found to be significant at 5% level of significance. The treatment means comparisons for instrumental textural characteristics of different thermal process treatments were performed using Tukey’s Test and the values were maximum for fried crab balls and minimum for crab balls processed to F0 6 except for gumminess which was minimum for F0 7. Consid- ering the sensory and instrumental textural charac- teristics, F0 6 was identified as the optimum process for crab koftha.