Method for producing textured protein material, and textured protein material

Abstract

The present invention addresses the problem of providing a textured plant protein material having chewiness due to a dense texture with small voids, and favorable restorability when reconstituted in hot water. Discovered is a freeze-dried textured protein material having favorable restorability when reconstituted in hot water and chewiness due to a dense texture with small voids. The textured protein material is produced by (A) introducing a raw material including a protein raw material into an extruder, adding water to attain a water content of from 60 to 80 wt. % with respect to a total amount of the water and the raw material including the protein raw material, kneading and heating under pressure the resulting mixture, cooling the kneaded mixture in a cooling die installed at an outlet of the extruder and including a hole having a length of a longest portion of 10 mm or greater, and extruding the mixture through the cooling die to obtain an unpuffed textured product, (B) cutting the unpuffed textured product obtained in (A) into a rectangular parallelepiped shape including sides from 5 to 12 mm, or cutting the unpuffed textured product obtained in (A) into a flat shape having a thickness from 0.1 to 5 mm, a length from 1 to 80 mm in an extrusion direction, and a width from 1 to 50 mm, and (C) freezing the unpuffed textured product obtained in (B) at from −5 to −25° C. and freeze-drying the unpuffed textured product.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.