Effect of soaking and microwave pretreatments on nutritional profile and cooking quality of different lentil cultivars.

Abstract

The present study was planned to apply various cooking pretreatments for improvement in nutritional profile and cooking quality of some Pakistani lentil cultivars. For this purpose, four lentil cultivars were analyzed for physicochemical properties. All lentil varieties were subjected to soaking (1.5, 3.0 and 4.5 h) and microwave roasting (10, 20 and 30 sec) before cooking to find out impact on cooking time, anti-nutritional factors (tannins, phytic acid and trypsin inhibitor), in-vitro protein digestibility and the level of different minerals in control and treated samples. Mean square of each parameter revealed significant difference among different lentil varieties and the treatments applied. Overall there was 54.16, 48.47, 51.93 and 99.82% reduction were noted for cooking time, tannins, phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors of lentils subjected to soaking followed by cooking, respectively along with 72.01% improvement in in-vitro protein digestibility. Whereas comparatively less reduction in tannins, phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors were recorded for microwave roasted lentils as 30.67, 45.39 and 97.82%, respectively. Microwave treatments imparted less influence on in-vitro protein digestibility and cooking time in relation to soaking. Mineral losses were observed in all treated samples. However, maximum losses were observed for Zn (43.98%) and minimum for Cu (7.75%). Conclusively, soaking before cooking was found better than microwave roasting.