Performance evaluation of indirectly heated cooking cum conveying system for rasogolla: An experimental study

Abstract

Rasogolla is a popular traditional Indian spongy product made from chhana. In spite of the demand of the product, its making process lacks mechanization. A cooking cum conveying system for rasogolla was fabricated and feasibility studies were done for the developed system. Thermic fluid was used as the secondary heating medium.  Optimization of the developed mechanized cooking unit for processing parameters was done. The performance evaluation of the fabricated system was conducted based on the design obtained from response surface methodology using design expert software. The effect of mass of ball (6, 9, 12 g) and screw speed (5, 10, 15 rpm) on cooking time, sphericity, L*, whiteness index, springiness, expansion ratio, percentage absorbed sugar, overall acceptability was found significant. The cooking time, sphericity, L*, whiteness index, springiness and overall acceptability of product were 18.00±1.15 min., 0.97±0.005, 77.76±1.40, 73.98±1.61, 0.19±0.03 and 8.00±0.00 respectively at optimized solution (mass of the ball as 6 g and screw speed 5 rpm). Microbial studies indicated better hygiene conditions with the developed system in terms of total colony count and yeast and mold count. Rasogolla prepared with the developed system was analysed for physico-chemical, textural properties and overall acceptability and no significant difference was found.