Instrumental measurements of the hardness of textured soy protein

The public knows the soy meat analog as extrusion-texturized spongy pieces resembling meat. The texture of cooked textured soy protein is important for consumers. In the study a range of commercialy sold textured soy protein (cubes, slices, granulated products) was measured to describe the textural properties. Textural properties were measured by three objective methods: Warner-Bratz­ler (WB) shear test, compression test and Kramer shear cell on a device Tira test 27025. The effects of cooking time and the influence of salt during cooking were examinated. To determine the significant differences between the results a statistical method ANOVA and post-hoc tests were used. We can conclude that there were significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences in the hardness of the samples. The most significant was the effect of brand name and addition of salt. The differences between different cooking times were noticeable but undefined