Penanganan Awal dan Pengeringan Umbi Talas (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schoot) menggunakan Sunbeam Food Dehydrator Tipe DT5600

Abstract

Drying process had become an effort to process taro corms as the raw material for industry. The main problems of taro corms post-harvesting before drying process were the pre-treatment and how to process the slice of taro corms. The objectives of this research are to study the dehydrator temperature effect and pre-treatment before drying process of taro corms using Sunbeam Food Dehydrator DT5600 (55 ᴼC and 75 ᴼC) to the dried taro corms quality, also to assess the performance of Sunbeam Food Dehydrator DT5600. The slice taro corms had 2 mm thickness. There were four treatments before drying, the first was no treatment as control, the second was blanching treatments of the slice of taro corms within the 7 liters water at temperature of 80 ᴼC for 15 minutes, the third was blanching which followed by the soaking within the 10% concentration of sodium chloride solution, and the fourth was same as third treatment which followed by blanching using 2 g/kg of sodium metabisulphite at temperature of 80 ᴼC for a minute. The result showed that taro which is dried at drying temperature of 75 ᴼC more efficient than that of dried at drying temperature of 55 ᴼC. The drying rate and efficiency of taro drying were 43.84 %bk/jam and 17.38% respectively. Dried taro is categorized into super quality for first and second treatments, first quality for fourth treatments and second quality for third treatments. The pre-treatment of taro drying by using blanching and by the soaking within 10% concentration of sodium chloride solution is recommended to reduce oxalate of dried taro until 81.11%.