 Fishing for a better bit of batter
Japanese scientists have come up with the perfect recipe to make a crispy batter which is also lower in fat, reports Joanna Harries in Chemistry & Industry |
 The perfect fish supper could soon be landing on your plate courtesy of Japanese researchers who’ve created a lower fat, crispy batter. And their technique can be extended to other fried foods so the perfect chip could soon be on the menu too.
Pariya Thanatuksorn and his team at Tokyo University of Technology, Japan have studied how the structure of the batter molecules changes during the frying process and constructed a diagram showing how the properties vary under different frying conditions. (Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 2007 DOI 10.1002/jsfa.3027).
Thanatuksorn said that their results can be used to predict the best recipe for reducing the amount of oil absorbed during cooking, while retaining the crunchiness of the batter.
During the deep-frying process a rigid microstructure of pores is formed in the batter, and this microstructure is responsible for the textural properties of the food, as well as determining how much oil is absorbed during frying. By altering the water content of the batter and frying time they propose the perfect conditions to create batter with long lasting crispiness.
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