Effect of deacetylation on the glucomannan gelation process for making restructured seafood products

This paper focuses on the relationship between network structure and physicochemical and rheological properties of aqueous glucomannan dispersions (AGD) as a function of pH, to establish optimal conditions of glucomannan gelation for making restructured seafood products. Various lots of AGD were prepared from 3% (L1) and 5% (L2) konjac glucomannan adding different amounts (0.5–5%) of 0.6 N KOH to obtain samples with successively increasing degrees of alkalinity, from pH = 8.9 to = 11.9 (samples L1.1–L1.6 for 3% AGD) and from pH = 7 to 11.4 (samples L2.1–L2.6 for 5% AGD). The spectra of the different AGDs were obtained by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) to quantify the deacetylation ratio, whose effect on the physicochemical, mechanical (puncture), viscoelastic (at both small and large time scales) and structural characteristics (scanning electron microscopy (SEM)) was analysed. A linear dependence was found between the relative area of acetyl bands of AGD and pH, showing a discontinuous region in the function or gap zone between pHs 9.3 (L1.2) and 9.8 (L1.3) for 3% AGD and between 9.2 (L2.3) and 10.7 (L2.4) for 5% AGD. Samples before the gap zone (L1.2 and L2.3) were gels of varying degrees of weakness, becoming strong gels thereafter. The gelation conditions were best at pH ∼ 10.7 for both 3 and 5% AGDs, corresponding to high and moderate deacetylation ratio, respectively. The resulting gels possessed elastic, cohesive and time-stable networks and thus formed basic structures able to contain several ingredients for making restructured seafood products. The SEM photographs corroborated the physicochemical and rheological characteristics.