Hard fats improve technological properties of palm oil for applications in fat-based products

•Hard fats added to palm oil can modify the functional attributes of fat-based product.•Crystallization rates of palm oil are improved by the addition of hard fats.•Molecular similarity between additives and lipids boots technological properties of fat-based products.

Palm oil is widely used in food industry. In many applications, palm oil is hindered by its slow crystallization rate and post-processing formation of large clusters of crystals. In order to overcome these drawbacks, addition of fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, known as hard fats, to palm oil is here proposed. Hard fats can behave as modifiers in the crystallization process due to their homogeneous triacylglycerol profiles. Hard fats from five different vegetable oils were added to palm oil, at the concentration of 1, 3, and 5 g/100 g of blend: palm kernel (PKO), palm (PO), cottonseed (CO), soybean (SO), and crambe (CR). An increase in the solid fat content and critical microstructure alterations affected positively the consistency and could be related to the small changes in the triacylglycerol composition, more precisely to the concentration of acyl groups present and their solubility in the liquid oil. Blends with PKO showed no appreciable improvements. Otherwise, addition of PO, CO, SO, and CR resulted in a significant effect on the rate of crystallization, and leading to a higher hardness and increase of the thermal resistance of palm oil intended for applications in fat-based products.