• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.326-330
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• 1998

Freeze storage technique is widely used for food processing to keep freshness and quality of the product. This technique was applied to fresh, unshelled groundnut to develop a new type of product which could maintain fresh taste and nutritive values even after several months of storage. The groundnut varieties, Daepungtangkong, Daekwangtangkong and Sindaekwangtangkong were grown at the experimental field of NCES in 1996. Immatured pods or groundnut were harvested around 20 to 3o days before full maturity, washed, and steamed at 100$^{\circ}C$ for 5 min. to stop enzyme activity. After vacuum packing (at -760mmHg for 10 min.) with 0.08mm polyvinyldichloride film, the pods were immediately frozen at -70$^{\circ}C$ for 24h and transfered at -20$^{\circ}C$ for long-term storage. Physico-chemical properties of frozen vegetable groundnut were investigated at 2 months after storage and compared to those of conventionally dried groundnut. After 2 months storage, the thawed kernels were very palatable with softness and fresh taste. Acid value and hardness (measured as the compression force on the probe of a texture analyzer) were much lower in frozen vegetable groundnut than those in the air-dried ones. Presence of free sugars is one of the important factors affecting groundnut taste, and the free sugar contents were considerably decreased in the frozen vegetable groundnut compared to freshly harvested groundnut. But in dried groundnut no free sugar was detected.