Suitable Type of Sugar for Nham Production Using Mixed Bacterial Starter Cultures

Abstract

Five types of sugar, sucrose, lactose, maltose, glucose and saccharose; were used for this study. This experiment is to investigate a suitable type of sugar with carbohydrate source (cooked rice and sticky rice) for Nham production using mixed bacterial starter cultures. For this experiment, it was found that 0.5% of glucose used in Nham formulation made the good quality of the product. The Nham is also composed of high reducing sugars (0.9130±0.0183%) which was suitable for the growth of nitrate reducing bacteria. Additionally, the lactic acid bacteria used the residual reducing sugars to produce lactic acid. After 48 hours of fermentation, the product had total acidity as lactic acid (1.0392 ±0.0205%), pH (4.23 +0.00) and residual carbohydrate (1.6354 + 0.1068%). The mean ideal ratio scores of colour, visual texture, firmness, juiciness, smoothness, sourness, saltiness, spiciness and overall acceptability were 1.25 ±0.27, 0.79 ±0.18, 0.93 + 0.13, 1.03 +0.14, 0.82 +0.17, 0.96 + 0.12, 1.03 ±0.11, 0.82 ±0.21 and 0.71 + 0.17 respectively.