Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Processes – Preparation of product which is dry in final form
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-16
2001-07-03
Cano, Milton (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Processes
Preparation of product which is dry in final form
C426S639000, C426S652000, C426S610000, C426S465000, C426S520000, C426S640000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06254912
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for non-fry cooking and its uses, and more particularly to a method for non-fry cooking which comprises a step of heating and dehydrating a food material using an aqueous trehalose solution with a relatively-high temperature and concentration, a non-fried food product obtained by the method, and an agent for non-fry cooking comprising trehalose as an effective ingredient.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Frying is a method for cooking using lipids and is daily used like other cooking such as boiling, steaming, and grilling. A cooking like frying is a method to contact/heat food materials with lipids, heated to a relatively-high temperature, to change the food materials from raw conditions to boiled conditions within a relatively-short period of time. More particularly, frying is a cooking for gelatinizing amylaceous substances and denaturing proteins in food materials. In this case, the water in the food materials is contacted with lipids, heated to a relatively-high temperature, and changed into vapor to lose water in whole or in part, resulting in an obtention non-dried foods which have been dehydrated and concentrated, and which the moisture have been replaced with a relatively-large amount of lipids.
In general, fried foods have an enriched taste and can be eaten directly; they can be suitably used as fast foods. The fried foods, however, have the following demerits: Lipids contained in the fried foods are very susceptible to deterioration and change in quality, and this shortens the shelf-life; they contain a relatively-large amount of lipids that may cause in living bodies a nutritional unbalance and an excessive calorie intake when taken excessively; and peroxidized lipids, that are pointed out on their problematic toxicity, are inevitably taken. Now, it is even said that the excessive intake of fried food products may induce life-style related diseases or geriatric diseases.
As a method to improve the above drawbacks, there used a process for non-fried noodles, comprising heating noodles by steaming and drying them.
Conventional non-fried noodles consist of gelatinized amylaceous substances; they cannot be adequately eaten directly and usually should be further processed by cooking and/or seasoning.
Recently, there have been proposed methods for producing dehydrated food products using sugar alcohols of reducing starch hydrolyzates, for example, in Japanese Patent Kokai Nos. 244/87, 258,543/88, 111,863/95, and 131,139/96.
However, the dehydrated food products prepared with the above sugar alcohols were revealed that they usually tend to become hard as if they were coated with hard candies, they easily become sticky by absorbing moisture during storage, they have a characteristic stimulus taste of sugar alcohols, and they are not easily assimilated and absorbed by living bodies to cause diarrhea.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention was made to solve the above conventional drawbacks: The first object of the present invention is to establish a novel method for non-fry cooking, the second object is to provide a non-fried food product prepared by the method, and the third object of the present invention is to provide an agent for non-fry cooking.
To solve the above objects, the present inventors continuously studied on the use of saccharide solutions. As a result, they found that aqueous trehalose solutions with a relatively-high concentration have a relatively-high heat tolerance, an adequate free-flowing ability under specific conditions, and a middle level of specific heat suitably used as a heating medium. They also confirmed that non-fried food products with a satisfactory flavor and taste are obtained by heating and dehydrating food materials using aqueous trehalose solutions with a relatively-high temperature and concentration. Thus, the present inventors accomplished this invention.
The present inventors solves the first object by providing a method for non-fry cooking which comprises a step of heating and dehydrating food materials using aqueous trehalose solutions with a relatively-high temperature and concentration; solves the second object by providing a non-fried food product by using the above method; and solves the third object by providing an agent for non-fry cooking, comprising trehalose as an effective ingredient.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The trehalose, alias. &agr;,&agr;-trehalose, usable in the present invention includes any types of trehaloses as long as their aqueous solutions with a relatively-high temperature and concentration can be used as heating media for the present non-fry cooking, independently of their origins and properties. Trehaloses from different origins, for example, one from yeasts as disclosed in Japanese Patent Kokai No. 246,097/95, one from maltose by the method using phosphorylases as disclosed in Japanese Patent Kokai No. 216,695/83, and those from starches by the saccharification method using enzymes as disclosed in Japanese Patent Kokai Nos. 170,977/95 and 213,283/95 can be arbitrarily used. Commercially available high-purity crystalline trehalose hydrate and high-purity crystalline trehalose anhydride can be appropriately used. For example, “TREHAOSE®”, a high-purity crystalline trehalose hydrate commercialized by Hayashibara Shoji, Inc., Okayama, Japan, can be used arbitrarily. Any temperature and concentration can be applied for the aqueous trehalose solutions used in the present non-fry cooking as long as they easily boil and dehydrate raw food materials into non-fried food products with a satisfactory flavor and taste; usually, preferable temperatures are those which easily gelatinize the amylaceous substances contained in food materials and/or denature proteins and inactivate enzymes present in the food materials, and preferably temperatures of at least 70° C., and more preferably temperatures of at least 80° C. The concentrations of the aqueous trehalose solutions are those which easily vaporize and/or release the moisture in the food materials to dehydrate them, i.e., the highest possible concentrations, preferably at least 50 w/w % (hereinafter “w/w %” is abbreviated as “%”, unless specified otherwise), and more preferably at least 60%. To accelerate the heating and dehydrating, aqueous trehalose solutions with a relatively-high temperature and concentration, preferably those with temperatures of at least 80° C. and concentrations of at least 70%, and more preferably temperatures of at least 90° C. and concentrations of at least 75%, can be arbitrarily boiled under a reduced or normal atmospheric pressure to accelerate the vaporization and concentration.
It was revealed that, when continuously boiled to about 115° C. under normal atmospheric pressure, aqueous trehalose solutions having a relatively-high concentration or containing substantially only trehalose as a solute, i.e., those containing at least 70% trehalose as a starting concentration are crystallized and solidified to promptly lose the free-flowing ability far from being used as heating media at over the temperature. In this case, it was found that the coexistence of trehalose and another solutes, that inhibit the crystallization of trehalose, maintains the free-flowing ability of the trehalose solutions even at a relatively-high temperature; One or more solutes selected from the group consisting of saccharides excluding trehalose, sugar alcohols, and glycerine can be arbitrarily used in the present invention to prevent from the loss of free-flowing ability at temperatures of 115° C. or more under normal atmospheric pressure by coexisting the solutes in the aqueous trehalose solutions, preferably coexisting the solutes at concentrations of at least 0.5% but less than 40% with respect to trehalose, on a dry solid basis (d.s.b.).
The saccharides other than trehalose include, for example, glucose, fructose, maltose, isomaltose, maltotriose, lactose, sucrose, etc. It was revealed that, although these saccharides generally have a relatively-low
Miyake Toshio
Shibuya Takashi
Takeuchi Yasuo
Browdy and Neimark
Cano Milton
DuBois Philip
Kabushiki Kaisha Hayashibara Seibutsu Kagaku Kenkyujo
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