Introduction
Banana is one of the important tropical fruits in Malaysia. It is a monocotyledon and belongs to the family Musaceae (Rowe, 1981). Most people consume it by raw, steamed or boiled. However, banana is easily ripe and it becomes a huge waste to the food industry. One of the method to process banana is to make banana chips. Banana chips are processed using deep-fried or dried slices of bananas. The chips can be covered with sugar or honey and have a sweet taste, or they can be fried in oil and spices and have a salty or spicy taste. Usually, the chips are produced from under ripe bananas, of which slices are deep-fried in palm oil or coconut oil, which are dry (like potato chips).If ripe bananas are used they come out oily. They are used for dessert, not for dry chips. Visual colour is the major quality criterion for determining the commercial quality with respect to consumers’ preferences and cost of the chips (Abdullah, 2014). Packaging and storage condition are the most important quality control factors for
chips preservation. Storage stability depends on packaging. Good packaging and storage condition extend the storage duration of chips. Oil uptake during frying is also need to be considered during frying because the fat content of a product will also affect its flavour, odour and general organoleptic properties. The frying oil not only acts as heat transfer medium, because they are heated to high temperatures approximately 170-180°C, it will start to degrade through hydrolysis and oxidation of fatty acids. The breakdown products themselves give rise to flavour and can further react with carbohydrates, proteins and their decomposition products to produce taste traditionally associated with fried food. One of the alternative used to reduce fat content in chips is by doing a pre-treatment before frying. According to Mai Tran et al. (2007), pre-treatment technique will reduce the oil absorption by reduction of surface permeability. As a food product is fried, the internal cells become dehydrated and the evaporated water is partially replaced by the frying oil (Rosana et al., 1997). Besides that, Saguy and Pinthus (1995)
Keywords
Fried banana chips Reduced fat content
Article history
Received: 7 February 2015 Received in revised form: 15 June 2015 Accepted: 2 July 2015
69 Aida et al./IFRJ 23(1): 68-71
suggested that as the water is evaporated from the food product during frying, the rate of oil absorption increases due to a reduction in the pore internal pressure. The aim of the project was to determine the effect of using different concentration of sugar to the oil uptake of fried banana chips. Besides that, the moisture content of banana chips before and after frying, colour analysis and sensory evaluation were also being determined in order to study the effect of pre-treatment to the final fried banana chips.