EFFECTS OF FRYING PARAMETERS ON SOME PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF FRIED SWEET POTATO (IPOMEA BATATAS)

Abstract

The effects of frying parameters (temperature; 130-170^oC and time; 2-10 mins) on moisture content, oil
content, bulk density and breaking force of fried sweet potato were determined using response surface
methodology (RSM). Sweet potato tubers sliced into a uniform thickness (3.0 mm) were fried with
sunflower oil using a commercial deep fat fryer. The results from the research showed that frying time
had significant (p<0.05) effect on moisture content and bulk density. Also, the interaction of temperature
and frying time showed significant effect (p<0.1) on bulk density. The quadratic term of time had
significant (p<0.1) effect on the oil content, while the quadratic term of temperature had significant
(p<0.05) effect on the breaking force of the sweet potato chip. The results further showed that increase in
frying temperature and time led to decrease in moisture content, bulk density and breaking force. While
increase in frying temperature and time brought about increase in oil content. The optimization developed
from this work showed that frying temperature of 145^oC and frying time of 6 min would produce sweet
potato of high quality in terms of low breaking force, bulk density, moisture and oil content.