Food innovation in your kitchen: Giving peas, beans and lentils a surprisingly meat-like bite
Separating things and then putting them back together is a common principle in industrial food production. Agricultural raw materials are broken down into their individual constituents, such as proteins, starches and fats, and the food industry then reassembles these building blocks into specific products. In many cases, not all of the harvested crop ends up in the food we eat. In some instances,…
A research team at ETH Zurich has discovered a simple method to turn whole peas, beans, and lentils into a fibrous product that closely mimics the texture of meat or fish. This technique, called freeze-structuring, involves soaking the legumes, blending them into a uniform mixture, and then freezing the puree in a specially insulated mold.
As the gel thaws, it retains its directional, fibrous structure while discarding dietary fibers, vitamins, and minerals. The method's success has been demonstrated with a wide range of legumes, accounting for 96% of global production, though certain species showed stronger and more stable fibers. The freeze-structuring process preserves most of the legume's nutritional value while creating a meat-like bite through the compression of the legume puree into parallel layers.
The researchers aim to further understand the mechanisms behind the varying textures and explore applications in recipe development.
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