Study of Infrared Dry-Blanching and Dehydration on Leaf Vegetables

Abstract:

Blanching and drying are two essential processing steps of dehydrated vegetables. The conventional methods have many disadvantages of time-consuming，high energy consumption，low product quality，as well as heavy pollution to environment. This study investigated the infrared dry-blanching and dehydration on leafy vegetables. The characteristics of vegetables were determined via the measurement of peroxidase（POD） activity，the changes on Vitamin C content and leaf color. The study showed that the POD activities of five selected vegetables were reduced to about 20% of their initial activity with infrared dry-blanching. Meanwhile，infrared dry-blanching also can remove partial moisture from vegetables and retain the high quality. In addition，the optimal conditions of infrared dry-blanching on the five different vegetables were also obtained from this study.