Optimizing Carotenoid in Red Chili as Spicy Ingredient

Artikel ini telah diterbitkan di Asia Food & Beverage Magazine Thailand 2019. 

Ini pengalaman pertama nulis untuk media luar. Hasil kerja sama dengan salah satu redaktur dalam negeri juga, yang mana mantan posisi di kantor lama saya. Masih tentang makanan dan ngga akan lari jauh-jauh juga dari foodtech. Selamat membaca. Semoga bermanfaat ~


The desire for spicy food has grown phenomenally over the last 500 years or so. Initially, red chili has been cultivated for its role as a flavor enhancer. It had been used to spicing-up maize-based diet. Red chili has been known to contain a rich source of vitamins; vitamin A and C. It also has antimicrobial properties, which the function of that is for helping the distribution, beside using cold preservation. This is stated by Spence (2018), that the ability of chili by releasing an endogenous opioid as antimicrobial compound may have helped the distribution toaround the world.

Capsaicinoid has been known as flavor compound in red chili. Lu et al. (2016) said that the research of anticancer and antitumor on capsaicinoid have killed cancer cells in the prostate, skin, breast, colon, lung, and human bladder. Besides capsaicinoid, carotenoid in red chili has an important role.
Carotenoid is yellow-orange-red pigment, that can be found in botanical photosynthetic plant, algae and microorganism. In addition,the functions of carotenoid are as a color pigment and protects plant tissues from the light. In recent years, this compound has been able to be used as protecting agent againts degenerative deseases.

source: https://www.cayennediane.com/what-are-capsaicinoids/

Red chili becomes one kind of food commodities that has high content of carotenoid. There are 50 structures of various carotenoids in chili that have been identified. Post-harvest handling and processing give a good effect in carotenoid bioavailability of food matrix. The food material will be injured by the processing, so that carotenoid can breakdown easily by oxidative enzyme and other oxidative substances.This will cause discharge and dissolution of carotenoid.

In red chili processing production, storage takes role in carotenoid reduction process. Compared with bell-pepper, red chili has lower numbers of reduction. Carotenoid reduction process in bell-pepper can be identified by colour degradation because of several factors that affect bell-pepper fruit during storage, i.e. temperature and water activity (Aw). Amethod that is capable to prevent carotenoid reduction during storage is using vacuum packaging. According to research conducting by Duman (2010), packing red chili by using flexible vacuum-hermetic (80 – 100 mmHg) gives the advantage compared with traditional storage, where is observed from quality parameters such as colour, odor and aflatoxin content. Commonly, preventing carotenoid degradation in storage can be achieved by reducing relative humidity(RH) and light intensity.

Heat treatment of red chili can help reduce carotenoid degradation before its storage, i.e. blanching method at 70 to 1050C. It is because of the enzyme will be inactivated. In red chili pickle product, pasteurization process with 20% NaCl and 2% acetic acid at 830for 5,2 minutes is the optimum condition to reduce carotenoid degradation. Besides that, heat treatment at 10, 90 and 1000C for 5 to 10 minutes will reduce carotenoid in the amount of 25-34% in red chili and 20-53% in bell-pepper.

References:
Duman AD. 2010. Storage red chili pepper under hermetically sealed or vacuum conditions for preservation of its quality and prevention of mycotoxin occurance. J Storage Prod Res 46 (3): 155-160.
Lu, Muwen., Ho, Chi-Tang., Huang, Qingrong. 2016. Extraction, bioavailability, and bioeffiacy of capsaicinoids. Department of Food Science, Rutgers University, USA.
Spence, Charles. 2018. Why is piquant/spicu food so popular?. International of Gastronomy and Food Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2018.04.002.

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