In the recent times, several novel freezing techniques have been attracting remarkable attention not onlywithin the scientific community but also in the food industry due to their ability to enhance the formation ofsmall size ice crystals and to prevent food products from freeze-damage. One of these is freezing assisted byelectromagnetic waves. This short study was intended to investigate the impact freezing under low powermicrowaves (MWs) (2450 MHz) had on the freezing time and the microstructure of the potatoes. The timetaken by the conventional freezing process to reach – 10 °C from 6 °C was 13.95 min, while the sametemperature change was achieved within 37.53, 19.87 and 20.18 min for short pulse high power (SPHP),long pulse low power (LPLP) and constant microwave (MW) freezing conditions, respectively. Althoughthat the application of MWs during freezing process, as it was expected, resulted in longer freezing timecompared to conventional freezing condition, the image analysis (X-ray _(micro-computed) tomography) resultsrevealed that the application of MWs during freezing process produced better microstructure than theconventional method.
展开▼
