Improvement of fermented dairy-plant concentrate technology

Introduction.The global trend toward developing functional food products has spurred interest in creating fermented dairyplant concentrates.These products balance nutritional and biological value by combining animal and plant proteins, offering enhanced functionality and meeting consumer demands for healthy, plant-based alternatives.Materials and methods.The research involved experimental and analytical methods to determine optimal technological parameters.Sensory evaluation, physicochemical analysis, and statistical processing were applied to evaluate the quality of dairy-plant concentrates.The methods used include soaking, homogenization, pasteurization, fermentation, and analysis of whey-plant suspensions with varying ratios of dairy and plant components.Results and discussion.The study established that the procedure of preparation of whey-plant suspensions involves soaking peanut (Arachis hypogaea) kernels for 480 minutes in a 5:1 ratio and homogenizing them for 4-5 minutes.Model samples of dairy-plant concentrates were prepared with whey-plant suspensions at ratios of 9:1, 4:1, 7:3, and 3:2.Results showed a decreasing trend in concentrate yield and increasing moisture content with higher proportions of whey-plant suspension.At a 9:1 ratio, the yield was 26.28%, decreasing to 21.8% at a 3:2 ratio.Simultaneously, the moisture content increased from 62.9% to 82.8%.The 4:1 and 7:3 ratios were identified as optimal, providing good functional and sensory properties.The waterholding capacity ranged from 59.1% at a 9:1 ratio to 76.2% at 3:2.Sensory analysis confirmed that concentrates with a 4:1 or 7:3 ratio had the most balanced texture, flavor, and appearance, closely resembling traditional milk-protein concentrates.The improved technology ensures consistent quality of fermented dairy-plant concentrates, allows for the use of plant components to enhance functional properties and enrich the amino acid profile, and provides the potential for their application as a base for other dairy products, including curd-based items.Conclusions.The feasibility of using peanut kernels in dairyplant mixtures has been demonstrated, addressing the issue of milk raw material shortages while enhancing the biological value of concentrates due to a more balanced amino acid composition.