Drying of sliced vegetables pretreated with sugar solutions

Steam blanching (3-4 minutes) followed by soaking into trehalose-maltosyltrehalose mixture solutions for 10 minutes was found to be a very effective pretreatment method for drying of sliced vegetables (potatoes and carrots). Peroxydase measurements showed that the enzyme activity was completely inactivated by a 3-minute steam blanching. Blanched samples were soaked in a 20 wt% (weight percent) sugar solution for 10 minutes at room temperature, and then dried by hot-air drying at 303K. The dried product with sugar solution treatment resulted in good product properties such as less shrinkage or deformation and better colorness retention. Especially, a solution composed of 18wt% trehalose and 2wt% maltosyltrehalose was quite effective in terms of the product quality and the drying efficiency.