Battered/breaded apple and mushroom prepared and baked to resemble their deep-fried counterparts

There is much interest in the development of food products which are compatible with the changing lifestyles of American consumers. The objectives of this research were: to develop acceptable snack foods using apple and mushroom; to develop an acceptable baked, low-fat coating system; to determine the effect of pretreatment on product characteristics; and to determine the effect of reheating method on product characteristics.

Stayman Winesap apple pieces and Snow White mushrooms were predusted or predried in an air impingement oven, then coated with a batter containing 3, 20 or 40% vegetable oil. Products coated with the 3% oil batter were deep-fried; the remainder were baked in an air impingement oven. Products were frozen and later reheated in conventional or microwave ovens.

Coating pickup increased and coating loss decreased as batter viscosity increased or with use of a predust. Percentage of coating retained on the product after reheating tended to be higher for products which had been coated with a higher viscosity batter, predusted, or reheated in microwave oven. Moisture of reheated products was lowest for fried products with variable effects of pretreatment and reheating oven. Fried products had lower Hunter L and higher hue angle values than baked products. Conventional oven reheating produced a greater total color difference (Delta E value) than did microwave reheating. Sensory panelists agreed that fried products were darker in color, however, they rated microwave reheated products as being darker than products reheated in a conventional oven. Fried products were rated by sensory evaluation as glossier, lower in coating adherence, crisper, less moisture absorbing and stronger in deep-fried flavor. There was no difference in acceptability of baked and fried apple products; fried mushroom products were more acceptable than baked mushroom. Apple and mushroom reheated in a conventional oven were crisper, absorbed less moisture from the mouth during chewing and were more acceptable than products reheated in a microwave oven.