UHT Skim Coconut Milk Production and Its Quality

Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agro-Industry, Kasetsart University, 50 Ngam Wong Wan Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand

E-mail: fagiwcj@ku.ac.th

Abstract

The current study is based upon the potential value of low-fat coconut milk in market due to increasing health concerns in people nowadays. Skim coconut milk can be used as a food ingredient that requires coconut milk flavor but excluding fat. The fundamental objectives of this study were to examine the methods for skim coconut milk production and comparison of its quality with normal coconut milk. The results of this study indicated that the UHT skim coconut milk can be prepared by separating fat through a cream separator, adding CMC and Montanox 60 at 0.6 and 0.6 %w/v respectively, two-stage homogenizing at 1,500/500 psi, and then UHT sterilizing at 140 °C for 4 s (F_o ≈ 5 min). It appeared that the remaining fat content in skim coconut milk was less than 1%. The addition of the CMC and Montanox 60 could obviously raise the stability of coconut milk emulsion and caused the increase of viscosity of the skim coconut milk specimen. The skim coconut milk had higher specific gravity and obviously darker than the higher-fat samples. The sensorial characteristic of skim coconut milk samples were different from the normal coconut milk.