g-Frying of 3D Printed Composite Protein-based Foods

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Although there has been significant progress in the past decade, production of fried food products with minimum oil content and desired textural, nutrient and sensory profiles remains a challenging objective. There are still gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms and factors involved in oil uptake phenomenon and texture development during frying. Recently, the g-frying technique was developed at McGill University. Preliminary study on the new technique has shown significant reduction in fat absorption. However, the nature of fat absorption and texture development during the g-frying process has not yet been elucidated particularly for highly popular composite coated snack foods. 3D printing has emerged as a transformative technology that enables manufacturing of products with specific shapes and microstructures. There are very scarce studies on 3D printing of protein based composite products. Further, the products require post-processing using high heat transfer cooking techniques such as frying. Therefore, combination of 3D printing and frying is of great interest. The proposed research program seeks to deploy 3D printed composite products with known and controlled microstructures and textural attributes to advance fundamental studies on the impact of textural properties on fat absorption. Such innovative study could not have been possible without 3D printing technology. Therefore, the goals of the proposed research program include: to study rheological and thermal properties of different coating (batters) and core (protein substrates) materials that could be used to form a composite protein based product; to assess the feasibility of designing 3D printed composite product structures comprising of an outer (batter coat) layer and an inner layer (protein based substrate) with controlled shapes and microstructures that would simulate a healthy snack food product (such as chicken nugget); and characterizing mass transfer (moisture and fat), textural and quality developments in the printed model composite (coating and core) protein based products during and after g-frying. The research program will provide crucial knowledge with respect to manufacturing new texture modified high quality and nutritious fried protein-based composite products. It will provide training and mentoring to 10 HQPs at various levels. These HQPs will have the necessary skills to contribute in ensuring production of high quality and healthy fried food products. Dissemination of new knowledge will be through presentations at technical conferences and industrial meetings as well as through publication of scientific papers.