Physicochemical, color, and sensory characteristics of edible oil-coated blanched sweet corn kernels

Abstract

Sweet corn has a higher moisture content, making it challenging to store for longer. The edible coating acts as primary packaging. The samples were blanched in hot water at 90°C for 90 s initially and were coated with olive oil concentration 0%–100% for 60–300 s at temperatures of 40–60°C, which makes the kernels acceptable even after 7 days in comparison to 4 days in untreated samples. The coating of hot water-blanched sweet corn kernels increased length, width, thickness, true density, porosity, color a*, color b*, ∆E, chroma, browning index, moisture content, and pH with increased coating time, coating temperature, and concentration and varied from 11.78 to 12.40 mm, 9.87 to 10.22 mm, 4.14 to 4.66 mm, 1082 to 1093 kg/m3, 33.70% to 37.29%, 4.19 to 4.57, 0.09 to 1.36, 7.46 to 8.34, 14.11 and 12.43, 78.32% to 83.41% and 5.87 to 5.98. While the coating process decreased bulk density, color L*, total sugar, ascorbic acid, and total soluble solid of sweet corn kernels with an increase in coating time and coating temperature and varied from 685.43 to 717.32 kg/m3, 74.68 to 75.12, 6.4% to 7.2%, 6.4 to 7.1 mg/100 g and 18.5 to 19.8 °Brix, respectively. The coating of sweet corn and hot water blanching is a promising hurdle to spoilage for extending the shelf life of sweet corn in food processing industries for developing various processed food products.