Effect of Wheat Flour and Salt Coating on Oil Uptake and Sensory Properties of Fried Chicken Meat

Fried foods, due to the desirable taste and flavor are quite popular. However due to the high amount of oil absorbed during frying, the use of coatings to reduce oil uptake in this food has been investigated.

In this study, pieces of chicken breast were coated in different concentrations of wheat flour (0, 3, 5%) in two groups of coating containing 0 and 1% NaCl. All the treatments were fried at 170 ºC±3 for 5 minutes. The quality and characteristics of all treatments were investigated.
 

The results showed that the moisture contents of the samples were maintained by increasing concentrations of flour and consequently the amount of oil uptake of the samples were decreased. The sensory evaluation results indicated that flour coating improved the texture of the samples (p<0.05) but the appearance and color scored  less and the flour did not have a significant effect on the taste (p>0.05). The evaluation of color indices showed that the brightness of the coated fried samples was less than the control treatment. Therefore fried treatments containing 1% NaCl had lower L index as compared to the control group and coated treatments with 5% wheat flour had the highest L index. In all the fried treatments, a index did not differ significantly, but b index increased considerably.

This study showed that the application of wheat flour lead to produce low fat fried foods without adverse effect on the sensory attributes of the final product.