Development of ready-to-eat extruded fish based noodles in semi-rigid containers”

Fish and fishery products are having a unique place in global food market due to its unique taste and flavour; moreover, the presence of easily digestible proteins, lipids, vitamins and minerals make it a highly demanded food commodity.Fishery products constitute a major portion of international trade, which is a valuable source of foreign exchange to many developing countries.Several new technologies are emerging to produce various value added products from food; “extrusion technology” is one among them. Food extruder is a better choice for producing a wide variety of high value products at low volume because of its versatility. Extruded products are shelf-stable at ambient temperature. Extrusion cooking is used in the manufacture of food products such as ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, expanded snacks, pasta, fat-bread, soup and drink bases. The raw materialin the form of powder at ambient temperature is fed into extruder at a known feeding rate. The material first gets compacted and then softens and gelatinizes and/or melts to form a plasticized material, which flows downstream into extruder channel and the final quality of the end products depends on the characteristics of starch in the cereals and protein ingredient as affected by extrusion process. The advantages of extrusion process are the process is thermodynamically most efficient, high temperature short time enables destruction of bacteria and anti-nutritional factors, one step cooking process thereby minimizing wastage and destruction of fat hydrolyzing enzymes during extrusion process and enzymes associated with rancidity.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research