Developments in Millet-Based Ready-to-Cook and Ready-to-Eat Foods
摘要
The increasing demand for convenient and health-enhancing foods has driven the production of ready-to-eat (RTE) and ready-to-cook (RTC) foods utilising nutritious grains, such as millets. It serves as an excellent base for health-oriented product innovation, as it has a gluten-free nature, high amounts of protein, dietary fibre, minerals, and bioactive compounds, along with a low glycaemic index. However, it is important to transform raw millet into value-added, diversified, and convenient products suitable for modern food systems. This chapter covers different conventional and evolving technologies applied in the processing of the millets to develop RTC and RTE products, including fermentation, germination, malting, roasting, puffing, popping, flaking, extrusion, baking, frying, and non-thermal processes. These operations minimise antinutritional factors and improve nutritional value, sensory appeal, and shelf life. Furthermore, fortification, optimum formulations, additives, processing aids, and proper packaging and storage lead to quality improvement and preservation of millet-based products. Instant meal mixes, extruded products, bakery products, snacks, beverages, infant foods, and other millet-based products have been developed as a result of diversifying products and have increased the application of millets in modern diets.