Frying is a dehydration process whi

Frying is a dehydration process which involves heat and mass
transfer. In addition, different chemical changes occur during frying
such as starch gelatinization and protein denaturation, surface
browning, rapid water evaporation and oil absorption. Deep-fat
frying generally occurs at high temperatures under atmospheric
pressure causing the absorption of a high amount of fat, which
could be up to 50% of the total weight of the fried food (Pinthus
et al., 1993). An increase in the fat content due to oil absorption
in fried foods has become a health problem associated with obesity
and coronary heart disease. Oil absorption is affected by various
factors such as frying temperature and time, food composition
(for example, the moisture, solids, fat and protein contents), porosity,
pretreatment (blanching and drying) and oil quality (Pinthus
et al., 1993). Thus, there have been many efforts to reduce oil
absorption during the deep-fat frying of many products such as
chickpeas (Annapure et al., 1999), potato strips (Garcia et al.,
2002; Rimac-Brncic et al., 2004; Tran et al., 2007), chicken nuggets
(Sahin et al., 2005), carrot slices (Akdeniz et al., 2006) and cereal
products (Albert and Mittal, 2002).