Changes of Lotus-seed Hardness During Thermal Processing and Storage
The hardness of dried lotus-seed and fresh lotus-seed during thermal processing and storage was comparatively investigated in this paper.The results showed that the hardness of lotus-seed was decreased,and the decreasing degree was greater with the increasing temperature during thermal processing.The fresh lotus-seed could bear 12-minutes thermal processing at most,while it was 25minutes when it turned to dried lotus-seed.In addition,in order to make sure lotus seed became fully curing,the temperature of thermal processing should be 90 ℃ at least.In the storage of lotus-seed after thermal processing,the hardness was gradually increased during the first 7 days and then hold steady.And the hardness of dried lotus-seed was all higher than fresh lotus-seed which was 1.4 to 1.6 times than that of fresh lotus-seed.The cataclysmic hot and cold made the changes of hardness of fresh lotus-seed relatively stable(from 99.11% down to 55.58%) and kekt a better structure,which was beneficial to the deep processing of lotus-seed.