3. Results and discussion
3.1. Blanching temperature
In order to study the effect of blanching temperature and
compare the color after frying of blanched NaCl soaked
slices against water-soaked slices, a NaCl solution concentration
of 3% w/w was selected from preliminary
experiments (results not shown).
In Fig. 3, the visual impression of the result of soaking
following blanching at different temperatures is exemplified.
In Fig. 4a, the corresponding average results of
lightness L, and in Fig. 4b the average pairwise differences
of lightness are shown. Potato slices tended to get darker after frying as the blanching temperature increased, for
both types of soaking.
Low blanching temperatures before frying thus improved
the color of the potato chips. These results are in
agreement with those found by Andersson (1994) and
Aguilera et al. (1999).