Development of finish cooking methods for producing low-fat breaded cheese sticks

Deep-fat fried foods have unique characteristics that attract consumers but their high fat contents must be reduced in order to provide healthy foods along with high quality. In the first part of this study, effects of frying temperature and frying pressure on the quality of partially fried breaded cheese sticks were determined. In the second part, far infrared finish cooking methods were compared to traditional deep-fat frying in terms of product quality. Increasing frying temperature significantly (P<0.05) reduced fat and moisture contents of the samples and increased crispness and exterior hardness. Pressure did not affect crust fat content of the samples significantly (P>0.05). However, increasing frying pressure resulted in the samples having higher moisture contents. Crispness and exterior hardness of pressure-fried cheese sticks were lower than traditional deep-fat fried samples. Increasing frying temperature and pressure resulted in darker sample color. Par-fried far-infrared finish cooked cheese sticks had lower fat contents than deep-fat fried cheese sticks had. Moisture contents of far-infrared finish-cooked samples were higher than those of deep-fat fried samples. Far-infrared finish cooking significantly (P<0.05) reduced crispness and exterior hardness of breaded cheese sticks.