CONVENIENCE AND HEALTH FOODS 3 (1+2)

Lesson 7 : Pulse Based Convenience Foods

Ready to use foods

Instant whole legumes

The legumes are soaked in water for 6-10hour. Soaked legumes are cooked for 20 minutes at 20lb steam pressure in autoclave. Cooked legumes are frozen at temperature -100C to -180C. Frozen legumes are dried in hot air cabinet at 700C in a fluidized bed dryer to a moisture level of less than 5 per cent. The cooked dried legumes are mixed with hot water & kept aside for 5 minutes to get consistency of cooked product. Instant kabuli channa remains stable at room temperature without changes for 9 months period.

Instant Vada mix

Bengal gram dhal, black gram dhal and raw rice are ground in a blender separately and sieved. The ground flours are dried in a cabinet dryer at 800C for 2 hours. Bengal gram flour, maida, black gram dhal, rice flour are mixed. To the mix salt , citric acid (0.01%) and sodium bi carbonate (0.1%) are added & mixed thoroughly with heated hydrogenated fat & cooled. The instant vada mix can be stored for a period of 150 days in poly propylene packages.

Instant Khichdi mix

• Instant khichdi mix is prepared by soaking of rice and whole green gram in water containing salt(1%) auto claving at 1.0kg/cm2 pressure for 15 minutes for rice and 20 minutes for green gram.
• Conditioning to reduce the moisture level to 20 per cent in rice and 13 per cent in green gram.
• Tumbling them in roller flaker and drying in a fluidized bed dryer at 600C to 5-6% moisture.
• Precooked and dried rice & green gram are blended with powdered spices (cumin seeds, black cardamom, pepper, cloves, ginger, chilli, turmeric & garlic powder) and salt by dispering them in vanaspati in a planetary mixer till uniformly mixed.
• One part of khichdi mix is treated with three parts of hot water at 900C to reconstitute it after 10 minutes.
• Instant khichdi mix remains stable for 12 months in poly propylene pouches.

Methi dhal instant mix

The tur dhal is soaked for 1 hour, cooked in an auto clave, flaked in roller and dehydrated at 700C in cross air flow method. The dehydrated tur dhal in mixed with dehydrated methi leaves, vanaspati, salt, turmeric and asafoetida and citric acid. The ingredients are mixed well by adding melted vanaspati for better distribution of spices. Reconstitution of mix is done by adding boiling water and methi dhal mix and mixed well and simmered for 2-3 minutes, this is ready to serve.