Production, proximate, and sensory assessment of Awara produced from fresh and sun dried soybean curd mix

Abstract

In developed countries, there is a renewed awareness on the utilization of legumes, because they are regarded as versatile functional ingredients that are nutritionally similar to meat and serve as replacements for animal protein. The primary aim of the work was to produce a sun dried Awara
(soybean curd) mix that will serve as a preliminary research base, aimed at providing a readily available, acceptable, and affordable protein   supplement when further processed. The mix was obtained by first sun  drying a fresh curd of soybean prepared using a standard acceptable procedure. Therefore, 4/5^th of the dry curd was ground into flour, which was separated into different particle sizes, using sieves with pore  diameters of 250ì, 180ì, 132ì, and 118ì respectively. The remaining 1/5^th of the dried curd was left unground. It was observed that the flours from 250ì and 180ì aperture sizes did not form curds after reconstitution, due to lack of cohesion. However, flours from aperture sizes of 132ì, 118ì and the unground flour formed curds of increasing cohesion respectively. This  indicated that the unground flour has higher cohesion ability than the
other flours, therefore less tendency to scatter during further processing. On the overall acceptability, no significant difference was observed at 1% and 5% between Awara made from fresh curd and that made from dried unground Awara flour.

Keywords: Awara, curd, proximate analyses, sensory analyses, soybean.