Protein Enriched Ready To Eat Product

Defatted peanut flour contains about 55-60% protein. Further, the creamy white color of this flour makes it a very suitable ingredient in the production of many value added products. The idea of production of nutrient dense ready-to-eat extruded snacks by blending of defatted peanut flour appears to be a very attractive strategy to improve the nutritional status of the snack foods the present research work was undertaken to standardize the process technology for extrusion of barnyard millet based snacks with addition of defatted peanut flour. The optimum treatment conditions were found to be, 15.014% (wb) feed moisture content, 25.619% defatted peanut flour level, 250 rpm screw speed and 134.5 °C die head temperature. The analysis showed that at this combination of feed moisture content, defatted peanut flour, die head temperature and screw speed, it would be possible to produce an extruded product with a water absorption index of 6.485 g/g, water solubility index of 7.390%, mass flow rate 204.254g/min, moisture content 4.816%, rehydration ratio of 52.003, expansion ratio of 2.178, water holding capacity of 6.099 and protein content of 14.376% with a desirability of 0.639.