Pretreatment characteristics of potatoes by soft steam treatment

This study aimed to investigate the effects of various soft steam treatments, namely, forced convection-boiler, forced convection-fan, and natural convection, on the pretreatment characteristics of potatoes. In this study, potatoes were exposed to various cooking conditions, including steaming method, treatment time (0-60 min), and temperature (60, 70, 80°C). Then, changes in temperature, cook value, ascorbic acid content, moisture content, and weight loss in the fresh and steam-treated samples were measured and evaluated. The results clearly showed that natural convective steaming was superior to other treatments in terms of heating characteristics, cook value (FC-b: 46.4±1.7, FC-f: 21.8±1.1, NC: 52.1±1.9 min at 80°C), ascorbic acid content (FC-b: 36.5±2.7, FC-f: 28.5±2.9, NC: 48.2%±2.5% at 80°C), moisture retention (FC-b: 74.6±0.8, FC-f: 71.5±0.5, NC: 77.6%±0.4% for 60 min at 80°C), and weight loss (FC-b: 13.9±0.8, FC-f: 15.6±0.6, NC: 10.6%±0.7% for 60 min at 80°C) for thermally processed potatoes.