The effect of extrusion cooking using different water feed rates on the quality of ready-to-eat snacks made from food by-products

The effect of different levels of feed moisture (12–17%) during extrusion cooking, using a co-rotating twin-screw extruder on selected nutritional and physical properties of extruded products was investigated. Four different formulations were used based on wheat flour and corn starch with the addition of 10% brewer’s spent grain (BSG) and red cabbage (RC) trimming reducing the flour and starch. The samples were: wheat flour + BSG (WBSG), corn starch + BSG (CBSG), wheat flour + red cabbage (WRC) and corn starch + red cabbage (CRC). Process conditions utilised were: constant feed rate of 25 kg/h, screw speed 200 rpm and barrel temperature of 80 and 120 °C. The results indicated that increasing the water feed to 15% increased the level of total dietary fibre (TDF) in all the extrudates while extrusion processing increased the level of TDF in WBSG, CBSG and CRC but decreased in WRC products. Extrusion cooking increased the level of total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and total phenolic compounds (TPC) in WRC and CRC. In addition to water feed level affecting the TDF of the extrudates, also affected were the expansion ratio, bulk density, hardness, WSI, SME and colour. The protein level of the products and hardness of extrudates were related to the different formulations.