Agriculture & Food, Volume 2, 2014

Abstract: Palm olein is the liquid fraction of palm oil which is obtained after the process of fractionation. By using special fractionation techniques, several types of palm olein such as standard (POo), double fractionated (DF), and special quality (SQ) are obtained and available in the market. These oleins are mainly used for cooking and frying purposes. Frying experiments were conducted simulating fast food service operations for 5 consecutive days using these three types of olein. The objective of this study was to compare their frying performance during deep fat frying French fries were fried in the tested oleins for 3.5 minutes at 180°C. Physical and chemical quality of the oleins before and after frying such as free fatty acid content, smoke-point, colour, polar compounds, polymer content and iodine value were analyzed. The iodine value of fresh oleins ranged from 56.1 to 65. The colour of fresh SQ was extremely low (1 R) compared to other oleins. After frying for 5 consecutive days, it darkened rapidly to 8R while DF and POo darkened to more than 9R. On day 5, the free fatty acid (FFA) of SQ was lowest (0.18%), followed by POo (0.25%) and DF (0.28%). SQ also showed the highest smoke point value of 204°C compared to POo and DF after frying for 5 days. The increment in polymer content for SQ was very minimal over the 5 days period of frying ranging from 0.44–0.62%. The polar compound of the 3 oleins after frying for 5 days ranged from 16.5 to 19.2%. The frying performance of SQ was found to be superior than other oleins in most of the parameters evaluated.