New Delhi: Enjoying the food, in 2016 Idiyappamor the Rice String Hoppers, made by her mother-in-law, Vinuta T., was amazed at how fresh the rice flour used to prepare the dish tasted.
“He told me it was actually eight to nine months old. But to me it looked fresh,” said Vinutha, a biochemist at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in Delhi.
When Vinutha asked her mother-in-law the secret behind this freshness, the scientist learned about a centuries-old heating treatment that many Tamil families use to make rice flour last up to a year. The technique, Vinutha said, involves first soaking and coarsely grinding the rice, then steaming it in a Idli cooker before drying.
for Vinuta, whose team was working on extending the shelf-life of millet at the time, or millet, This method was a revelation. Until then, his attempts at using a variety of additives, including salts and chemicals, had proved futile.
the next day, he decided to take a Idli Cooker for his lab. The end result, he said, was barge flour, or Millet flour, with a shelf life of 90 days. A vast improvement over its previous shelf life of approximately 10 days.
Today, Vinutha’s team, apart from their research, also oversees the preparation of delicious millet-based meals for dignitaries at IARI events, with the aim of demonstrating how their improved flour can replace wheat and rice flour. can take
His Work part of ICAR’s efforts to make humble millet a luxury Food Choices – A Mission In Accordance With Narendra Modi government’s Initiative To promote its cultivation and consumption. Policy Serves the dual purpose of improving food and nutrition security and supporting rural livelihoods.
Vinutha said, “If we look at western countries, they have succeeded in popularizing oats in the Indian market as well.” “We thought, why can’t we do the same for millet?”
AAccording to the scientist, millet has two major drawbacks that have limited its popularity in the Indian kitchen.
Has a short shelf life due to the high percentage of lipids or fatty compounds. This means that prolonged exposure oxygen Can cause lipids to convert to unwanted hydroperoxides, causing flour to go rancid within 10 days.
Another issue is making sure the dough is soft. ,millet The flour,” said Vinutha, “does not have the same softness as wheat flour.”
Although Bread made of millet Flour being a common kitchen staple in many Indian states, it needed to be made more palatable to appeal to a wider population. For that, he felt, it was important that the dough be soft.
The softer flour will allow millet to replace wheat in more palatable foods such as cookies, brownies, burgers and pizza, he said.
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increasing shelf life
He said that the first problem was solved by using dry heat treatment on millet flour.
The scientist said that dry heat treatment inhibits the enzymatic activity that causes rancidity in the plant, thereby increasing its shelf life.
However, the challenge was how to adapt the technology for use on millet. Using the technique of drying and heating millet flour, he had learned, turned the flour into a black, charred residue.
“Bajra also could not cope with the low level The heat used to process the oats,” Vinutha said.
The challenge then was to find the optimum temperature to heat the millet, which he eventually found and perfected. heyOver the years, she was able to gradually adapt a combined heat treatment of hydrothermal and near-infrared rays to increase the shelf life of the flour to 90 days.
“With less than 10 minutes of combined heat treatment, we are able to keep the dough longer,” Vinutha said.
softening of millet flour
To make the flour soft, the team extracted vital gluten from wheat flour and added it to millet flour.
Vital Wheat Gluten is made by washing wheat flour flour with water until all the starch is removed, leaving only the gluten.
“It is responsible for the softening of wheat flour as it has high visco-elastic properties,” Suneha Goswami, an ICAR scientist and part of Vinutha’s team, told ThePrint.
adding vital wheat gluten helped make the dough soft enough to be used not only Fluke But burgers, pizzas and brownies, too, offer a healthy flour substitute for diabetics and the health-conscious.
“For exotic food items like brownies or burgers, we have collaborated with the Indian Institute of Hotel Management, Delhi, which is adapting recipes to make delicious food out of millet flour,” Vinutha said. “They are happy with the quality because now they can replace wheat with our millet flour in a lot of recipes.”
Highly Nutritious Smart Crops
Vinutha’s team believes that these modifications will help millet gain wider acceptance.
Millets are a family of small seeded grasses that have been traditionally grown in India for centuries. The crop family includes not only millet but also like crops ragi ,Finger millet) and High tide (Fodder).
Millets are not only highly nutritious and drought-resistant, but also require less water and cost of cultivation than other cereal crops, making them well suited for smallholder farming systems.
Modi government has been Promoting Cultivation of millet through programs like National Food Security Mission (NFSM) and announcement of Higher Minimum Support Price (MSP).
“Pearl millet is known as a ‘nutritious grain’. Millet is far better than the main staple crops like wheat and rice in India,” explained Goswami.
This is due to its high nutritional value, “In carbohydrates, it is almost similar (wheat and rice). Although the fat content is higher than that of rice or wheat, 74 per cent of it is good fatty acids,” he told ThePrint.
Millet also has a higher protein content than wheat or rice. Besides this, most millets grown in India are also biofortified with iron and zinc, the scientist said.
Marketing it as ‘high-end’
Vinutha said the team paid special attention to its packaging to make it more attractive to the wider market.
This meant making sure it looked on par with other luxury food products on the market.
ICAR sells flour under the brand name ‘Hallur’ in its shop at the rate of Rs.50 per kg. The flour has already received a license from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), India’s food regulator, and is also sold on select e-commerce platforms such as Amala Earth, Vinutha said.
However, it also has disadvantages. For one thing, the product canPeople allergic to gluten should not consume it. For another, the vital wheat gluten is not produced domestically and must be Goswami said that it is imported from countries like China, Singapore, Korea, America and UAE.
For researchers, this means they have to make it in their own lab.
“In India, we do not have an industry manufacturing gluten,” he said. “About 50 per cent of imported gluten is used for bakery products, 20 per cent is used in sports drinks and the rest is used to strengthen flour used to make pasta and noodles,” he added. Is.” This will not only help India cut down on imports but also give a boost to a domestic industry.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)