Understanding the influence of curdlan on the quality of frozen cooked noodles during the cooking process

The aim of this study was to clarify the influence of curdlan on the quality of frozen cooked noodles (FCN) by exploring the changes in textural properties, color profile, thermal stability, and micromorphology of FCN during cooking. Herein, an improvement in hardness, springiness, and tensile fracture distance was observed after adding 0.5% of curdlan, from 2876.82 +/- 14.59 to 3371.08 +/- 64.75 g, 0.85 +/- 0.01 to 0.91 +/- 0.02, and 90.60 +/- 0.79 to 94.29 +/- 1.37 mm, respectively. Combined with the decrease in weight loss and total color difference, from 9.01 +/- 0.25 to 7.03 +/- 0.07 and 76.00 +/- 0.16 to 75.71 +/- 0.24%, respectively, it can be inferred that the improved quality of FCN was mainly attributed to the stable gluten network mediated by curdlan. Moreover, results of micromorphology demonstrated that FCN with 0.5% curdlan had higher protein percentage area (35.20 +/- 0.32%), junction density (5.97 +/- 0.09 x 10(-4)), total protein length (35733.97 +/- 456.84 mu m), and degree of protein aggregation than those of FCN without curdlan, confirming that curdlan helped in maintaining the stability of gluten network and inhibited the depolymerization of gluten proteins induced by excessive cooking.