Development of low salt restructured chicken nugget by response surface methodology and its quality evaluation

Central composite design of Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to study the effect of sodium chloride; NaCl (0.5-1%) and salt replacer potassium chloride KCl (0.5-1%) in combination with whey protein concentrate (0.5-1.5%) and black gram flour (2-4%) on the overall acceptability, saltiness and instrumental hardness of low salt restructured chicken nuggets. Reduction of NaCl content to 0.75% in the product with the addition of 0.70% KCl, 1.18% whey protein and 2.5% black gram flour showed a desirability of 97%. The physicochemical, sensory and textural properties as well as stability at refrigerated temperature (4±1oC) of low salt nuggets developed with optimized levels of the four factors were compared with control nuggets containing 1.5 % NaCl. Although the keeping quality of low salt nuggets was lower than control, a shelf life of at least 25 days was achieved under refrigerated condition.