Application of Papain in Food Processing

August 12, 2024

With the improvement of living conditions, people have higher standards and requirements for the taste, flavor, and nutritional content of food. To meet people's needs, the food processing industry needs to continuously improve food quality and safety. Enzyme preparations have efficient catalytic functions, and protease preparations are the most widely used in food processing, accounting for 60% of global enzyme preparation sales.

Proteases are widely used in the food processing industry due to their advantages of reaction safety, specificity to the target substance, and high efficiency. The application of proteases in food processing mainly includes the following four aspects: meat processing, baked goods processing, beer processing, and tea beverage processing.

(1) In meat processing, the important role of protease is to tenderize meat, and protease and salt are the main components of meat tenderizer, among which papain is the most commonly used protease preparation.

(2) In the process of baking food processing, adding an appropriate amount of protease can change the properties of gluten, obtain dough with moderate viscosity, and shorten the preparation time of dough. Due to the reduced elasticity of the dough, the gluten pores become finer and the gluten film becomes thinner during the fermentation process, resulting in a compact and even bread with a soft touch. In addition, proteases have little effect during the process of grilling bread.

(3) In the brewing industry, due to microbial contamination and chemical reactions of beer at low temperatures, the turbid substances produced by chemical reactions are mainly proteins and polyphenolic compounds, resulting in beer often becoming turbid during storage. The method to reduce beer turbidity is to add protease to remove protein from beer. Protease is usually used for papain before pasteurization. Due to the high heat resistance of protease preparations, there may still be residual enzyme activity in beer after pasteurization. When yeast is filtered out, there is no protease activity in beer.

(4) In tea beverages, studies have shown that papain can break down soluble proteins in tea leaves, increase amino nitrogen content, enhance the freshness of tea juice, and significantly improve the flavor of tea juice.

In summary, proteases are mainly used to tenderize meat, improve bread quality, clarify beer, and enhance the freshness of tea leaves. I believe that with continuous technological innovation, the development of protease preparations will make greater contributions to the food industry and improving people's lives.

Author:

Ms. Anne

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sales13@huikes.com

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