Optimization of Physicochemical Characteristics of Corn-Based Extruded Snacks Containing Pomegranate Seed Powders

Background and Objectives: The extruded snacks with high content of calorie and fat and low content of protein, fiber is considered as a deleterious and harmful foodstuff for most of the consumers. Today, various techniques have been proposed to improve the quality of snacks. The use of fruits processing by-products to extruded snacks is one of the most important technologies that is proposed. In this research, pomegranate seed powder was used to improve quality attributes of extruded snacks. Materials and Methods: In this research, the effect of pomegranate seed powder (0–20 %), extruder temperature (120-160°C) and screw rotation speed (120–180 rpm) as an independent variable on physical characteristics (sensory evaluation, expansion index, texture propeties,) and functional characteristics (water solubility index, moisture content, total fiber content, oil absortion index, fattyy acids profile) of an expanded corn snack was measured. Results: Amongst the experimental situations applied in this research, the optimum value of factors is the subsequent addition of fiber complementary 11.6 %, the temperature of the extruder 160 °C, the screw speed of 125 (rpm), the moisture content 3.63%, the fiber content 11.88%, WSI 5.64, hardness of 1.42 (N), expansion ratio of 0.45 and OAI 2.56. The results showed the hardness, total fiber, and overall acceptance of samples were increased by increasing the amount of pomegranate seed powder from 0.63 ± 0.1 to 2.93 ± 0.2 (N), 1.28 ± 0.14 to 27.9 ± 0.84 (%) and 3.9 ± 0.16 to 4.9 ± 0.11, respectively. Conclusions: According to the results of this study, the incorporation of pomegranate seed powder improves the functional characteristics of extruded snack.