In the acidic medium pectin properties are particularly stable, many acidic materials are pectin as a thickener to use, has a better emulsification, stabilization and gelation and other roles.

In recent years, with the improvement of people’s living standards, people’s attention to food nutrition has increased greatly, scientists in the pectin structure and effect relationship of the relevant research has also made good progress, to a certain extent, to promote the development of pectin production process.

In order to improve the utilization rate of pectin production, change the small scale of pectin production in China and product quality backward status quo, now discusses the production of pectin extraction process, and the application of pectin in food and its prospects for analysis.

The main production process of pectin

1. Pre-treatment of raw materials

The pretreatment of raw materials for pectin production mainly includes 4 kinds of work, respectively, raw material washing, raw material enzyme inactivation, raw material breaking treatment and determination of calcium pectate weight method.

2. Extraction of pectin

The traditional method of producing pectin is acid hydrolysis of the peel to extract pectin, as well as continuous countercurrent extraction, ion exchange resin method, enzymes and microorganisms, microwave extraction, ultrasonic extraction and chelating agents. Currently. China’s pectin manufacturers mainly use acid extraction to extract pectin. The following table shows the extraction process conditions for each type of method.

Specific applications of pectin in food production

1. Yogurt products

In the production of yogurt, different types of pectin have different roles. For example, the addition of high-fat pectin can stabilize the structure of yogurt, while the addition of low-methoxy pectin can prevent the precipitation of whey. The amount of pectin added during yogurt production needs to be strictly controlled. Once a sufficient amount of additives is not added, the charge will be neutralized, the repulsive force will subside, and the structure of the dairy product will not be stabilized, so it can only continue to be added, and the structure of the acidic dairy product will remain stable after a new repulsive force is generated.

2.Jam

If the content of pectin in the raw material is too little when producing jam, then the thickening effect of pectin can be utilized, using 0.2% of pectin as a thickener. The amount of pectin used in low sugar jams is about 0.6%. The recipe for low sugar strawberry jam is 50% strawberries, 36% granulated sugar, 13% water, 0.6% amidated low methoxyl pectin and 0.4% citric acid.

3. Bread

High-methoxy pectin has very strong water-washing properties, which not only increases the volume of the dough, but also improves the freshness, stability and softness of the dough. Since the dough has better ductility after adding pectin, the baking volume of bread will increase. For example, in the production of hamburgers, if the volume of hamburgers remains unchanged but pectin is added, the amount of flour used for the same volume of hamburgers can be reduced by 30%. In addition, breads made with pectin-added dough can be made for a longer period of time.

4. Beverages

As people pay more attention to dietary health, low-sugar beverages have become more and more popular in today’s market, but the taste of beverages decreases when the sweetness is lowered. In this regard, the taste of beverages can be increased by adding 0.05%-0.1% of high methoxy pectin.

High methoxy pectin is a suspending agent, will be added to the beverage containing fruit pulp, it can and calcium ions to produce a gelling reaction, thereby reducing the hard substances caused by the precipitation of fruit pulp, so that the fruit particles evenly suspended in the beverage, but also to improve the taste of fruit juice, not only to overcome the pseudoplasticity of the sodium alginate is poor, gelatinous fishy taste, turbidity and other shortcomings, but also to play the health role of the stomach and exposure to lead poisoning.