Instrumental Textural and Rheological Properties of Raw, Dried, and Cooked Noodles with Transglutaminase

Textural and rheological properties of raw, dried, and cooked noodles with microbial transglutaminase were evaluated by an instrumental texture analyser. Generally, the strength of the noodles significantly increased with microbial transglutaminase concentration from 0 to 1.0%. The cutting force of raw noodle is a good indicator to predict the strength of dried and cooked noodle products. Mechanical stress relaxation data of cooked noodles were fitted well by both Maxwell and Peleg-Normand models. The fitted parameters, (1) and k(2), were more sensitive to the changes in viscoelastic properties than k(1) and %SR. Significant correlations were found between textural characteristics and stress relaxation parameters. Results of this study suggest that dried or cooked noodle with good quality can be produced by incubating with 0.51.0% microbial transglutaminase for 30 min at 30 degrees C.