Dynamics of Crust Formation and Kinetics of Quality Changes During Frying of Meatballs

Mathematical models describing dynamics of crust formation and kinetics of crust color and firmness changes were developed for the deep-fat frying of beef meatballs. Good agreement (R2 ranged between 0.815 and 0.987) was observed between experimental and predicted data. Crust color lightness, redness, and yellowness decreased exponentially with frying time while total color change increased. All color parameters followed first order reaction kinetics. Meatball firmness was measured by peak force obtained from a puncture test whose kinetics model had a reaction rate constant of 5.39E-3 1/(s.N^n-1) and a reaction order of 0.0013.