Ohmic‐Assisted Texture Softening of Cabbage, Turnip, Potato and Radish in Comparison with Microwave and Conventional Heating

Recently, ohmic heating has shown promising advantages for accelerated and controlled texture softening of some vegetables over conventional cooking. Textural properties of ohmically cooked cabbage, radish, turnip and potato were measured by texture profile analysis, and compared with microwave and conventional cooking. The data were experimentally modeled into an exponential model and softening rate and residual texture were calculated. Ohmic heating at 380 V softened the texture of all four studied vegetables at greater rates in comparison with microwave and conventional methods. Comparing the texture softening rate, k value, of the cooked vegetables indicated that they were in the order of radish > turnip > potato > cabbage, and among the four studied vegetables the maximum and minimum texture response changes to cooking were found in radish and cabbage, respectively. In contrast to conventional and microwave cooking, an interesting and emerging finding was the significant increase in cohesiveness of ohmically processed vegetables with cooking time. Practical Applications Ohmic cooking had recently been introduced as an emerging method to shorten cooking time and speed up texture softening of vegetables. In this research, four vegetables were cooked with ohmic technology and their textural properties were compared with the samples treated with conventional and microwave cooking. The results showed the ability of ohmic technology to soften the texture of vegetables faster than other methods with greater constant rate values and less residual textures. By applying ohmic processing, food industry can benefit from controlled texture modification of vegetables leading to higher textural quality of processed foods.