Sweet potato compositions

Abstract

A sweet potato snack chip which is made by cooking dough that contains a sweet potato flour composition that includes sweet potato powder, sweet potato flakes and mixtures of these. The sweet potato snack chip has a chip density of from about 0.6 g / ml to about 2.0 g / ml, and a chip fracture strength of from about 400 gf to about 900 gf. The preferred dough formed from the sweet potato flour composition is sheetable and cohesive. Fabricated snacks made from this dough have desirable taste and texture characteristics.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 688,853, filed Jun. 9, 2005 which is herein incorporated by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to sweet potato flour compositions and to food products comprising sweet potato flour compositions, especially fabricated snack products comprising sweet potato flour compositions. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Fabricated snack products prepared from dough comprising starch-based materials are well-known in the art. These doughs typically comprise dehydrated potato products such as dehydrated potato flakes, granules, and / or flanules. The dough can also comprise a number of other starch-based ingredients, such as wheat, corn, rice, tapioca, barley, cassava, oat, sago, and potato starches, as well as flours. These other starch-based ingredients are typically included in the dough in lesser quantities than the dehydra...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017] The sweet potato flour compositions of this invention, when used in fabricated snack dough, result in cohesive dough having the desired level of elasticity and in finished fabricated snack products having the desired organoleptic properties. The sweet potato flour composition can also be used to produce food products such as extruded products, baked snacks, tortilla based snacks, sauces, coatings for foods, nutritional foods, food for special needs (i.e. diabetics, etc.), dog foods, dog biscuits, baby foods and breads.

[0018] As discussed above, there are both taste and nutritional reasons for using the sweet potato flour compositions of the present invention. Specifically, sweet potato is high in natural sugar, making the snack piece sweeter than other snack chip products, it is naturally high in vitamins and fiber, and it absorbs less fat when fried. But making dough, fabricated snack products, and fried chips that contain a large percentage of conventional sweet potato flour presents certain processing and formulation difficulties. These difficulties are largely overcome by the selection of the sweet potato starting ingredients and the formulations of the present invention.

Problems solved by technology

But these conventional flours and starches are typically low in both natural sugar and fiber.

Thus the fabricated snack products lack the consumer preferred sweet taste and the nutritionally beneficial high fiber content.

Added fiber can negatively affect the flavor and texture of the snack product, and high levels of added sugar has a negative effect on the taste and texture of the product when cooked at high temperatures.

But formulating consumer acceptable snack products from sweet potatoes has been problematic at best, and in most cases entirely unsuccessful.

Natural products such as sweet products with high reducing sugars during cooking become rubbery and to bring them to the glassy state requires more energy, that is, they must be cooked at very high temperature.

Increasing the temperature causes the product to burn or caramelized, with the resulting off-flavor and bitter taste.

Therefore, the manufacturer faces the option of either frying the product to high moisture content in the finished snack, which retains the flavor but does not provide the requisite crispness, or cook the product more to make it crispy, but with a burnt flavor.

This results in products with substantial variation in color, and in finished moisture content, which affect texture and product stability.

Consumers have grown accustomed to snack chips with a crispy texture and eating quality of potato, corn, and wheat based snacks, and breaking from that established equity is difficult.

While these commercially available products enjoy some consumer acceptance, they are still not substitutes for, nor do they provide a crispy, crunchy and light texture comparable to that found in consumer preferred potato chips.

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