Quality Performance, Proximate Composition and Sensory Evaluation of Developed Flavoured Instant Popcorn

Popcorn is a world famous snack food with significant commercial demand. Its market has been continuously growing in Sri Lanka. At the same time, different variety of instant popcorn products should be tested for sensory attributes, proximate composition and quality performance. The flavoured instant products were developed by adding 15%, 25% and 35% butter and butter oil as separately and 0.5 g, 1.0 g and 1.5 g salt respectively for 20 g of raw popcorn grains. 35% butter incorporated popcorn had significantly higher median score for appearance, taste and overall acceptability. There was no any effect of level of salt added. Proximate composition was determined for raw seed, raw popped flakes and flavoured popped flakes. Butter flavoured popped corn flakes were showed higher level for crude fat content and mineral content while lowest content for carbohydrate 16.71%, 2.4% and 64.2% respectively. Kernels were popped using a microwave oven and visually sorted into three different polymorphisms depending on whether the appendages were expanded unilaterally, bilaterally, or multilaterally. The expansion volume before sorting was comparatively lower and it was 10-11cm3/g. When popped, 37.37%, 14.02%, and 33.57% of kernels were expanded unilaterally, bilaterally, and multilaterally, respectively, while 14.2% of kernels remained unpopped. Expansion volumes in respect to flake weight were shown significant differences for unilaterally, bilaterally, and multilaterally expanded polymorphisms of 9.34, 8.86 and 12.29cm3/g, respectively.