Development and Evaluation of Low-Fat Fish and Chicken Nuggets Fortified With Date Seed Powder and Quinoa Flour as Agricultural Dietary Fiber Sources

In recent years, high-oil-content fried products, such as nuggets, have posed a significant challenge and concern for consumers, leading to increased interest in fiber-enriched meat alternatives that offer specific functional properties and health benefits. This study investigated the incorporation of quinoa flour and date seed powder as fiber sources into chicken and fish paste formulations at a 6% concentration, with varying ratios of quinoa flour to date seed powder: 0:0 (T1), 100:0 (T2), 75:25 (T3), and 50:50 (T4). The results demonstrated that adding these ingredients markedly improved the dietary fiber content, water holding capacity, cooking yield, and pH levels of the nuggets (p < 0.05). Notably, the T4 treatment exhibited the lowest oil absorption (3.82 g for chicken and 5.19 g for fish per 100 g of product) among all formulations (p < 0.05). The fiber-enriched nuggets exhibited noticeable differences in texture and color. Additionally, the incorporation of quinoa flour and date seed powder positively influenced the sensory attributes of the nuggets, with T3 achieving the highest overall acceptance score. This formulation was identified as the most favorable option for both chicken and fish nuggets, owing to its optimal cooking yield, high acceptance, adequate fiber content, and minimal oil absorption.

Quality attributes of chicken nuggets extended with different legume flours

Chicken nugget is a comminuted meat product commonly prepared from spiced chicken meat and other ingredients. The tenderness of chicken meat lowers its firmness and mouth feel which may reduce acceptability of chicken nugget made from it. Thus, acceptability of chicken nugget could be harnessed when legume flour extenders are used along. Therefore, acceptability as well as quality of chicken nugget from different legume flours were evaluated. Soyabean, groundnut and cowpea flours were used as meat extenders for development of raw chicken nuggets and thereafter cooked for consumption. The quality of both raw and cooked legume flour extended chicken nuggets were assessed based on functional properties, sensory properties, proximate composition, amino acid content and shelf stability in terms of lipid peroxidation and microbial load. In their raw state, the legume flour extenders competed favourably with each other. Among all, soyabean flour extender maintained remarkable functional properties that transcend into significant (P < 0.05) yield of 86.93% of chicken nugget in comparison to the control (86.37%), groundnut (84.95%) and cowpea (84.50%). Upon cooking, all the legume flour extended chicken nuggets varied in their quality attributes. Apart from the high level of flavour and low microbial load, cowpea extended chicken nugget was of low quality based on the parameters evaluated in comparison with other legume flour extended chicken nuggets. Of interest, soyabean extended chicken nugget followed by groundnut extended chicken nugget were of good quality based on sensory properties, high crude protein and amino acid levels, low cholesterol content and lipid peroxidation value as well as low microbial load.

Graphical abstract