Instrumental measurements of the hardness of textured soy protein

Abstract

The public knows the soy meat analog as extrusion-texturized spongy pieces resembling meat. The texture of cooked textured soy protein is important for consumers. In the study a range of commercialy sold textured soy protein (cubes, slices, granulated products) was measured to describe the textural properties. Textural properties were measured by three objective methods: Warner-Bratz­ler (WB) shear test, compression test and Kramer shear cell on a device Tira test 27025. The effects of cooking time and the influence of salt during cooking were examinated. To determine the significant differences between the results a statistical method ANOVA and post-hoc tests were used. We can conclude that there were significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences in the hardness of the samples. The most significant was the effect of brand name and addition of salt. The differences between different cooking times were noticeable but undefined.

Keywords

• textured soy protein
• hardness
• texture
• Warner-Bratzler test
• compression test
• Kramer shear cell test