Illustrate the Applications of Gellan gum
Gellan is a highly versatile food ingredient and has numerous applications in foods. The combination of gelatin with gellan, by comparison, produced gels with both pleasant organoleptic properties and thermal stability.
Although alginate produces stable gels, gellan not only enhances thermal stability when used as gelling agent, but also provides excellent clarity, which is an important feature for some jellies or sugar icings. The addition of gellan in fruit and milk beverages has also proved to be very useful in forming stable, homogeneous products.
Gellan can be utilized in confectionary and bakery products. Starch jellies, due to introduction of gellan reduces the setting time to 10-12 hour. In addition, gellan can prevent moisture fluctuations in sugary icings and toppings.
Gellan can successfully replace pectins and are effective at lower concentrations. In these products, syneresis is minimized, while jams have good organoleptic characteristics and spread easily. Low solid and reduced calorie jams can also be prepared with only 0.15% of high clarity gellan, giving a jam with excellent sheen. The firm consistency of pie fillings and puddings can be obtained from gellan alone or in mixtures with modified starch.
It can be used as a stabilization and water-binding agent, averting the "blanding effect" that starches can have as food flavour (i.e., starches generally tend to weaken the flavour release characteristics of food).
Gellan gum offers significant thermal resistance during the pasteurization process. In dairy products like cheese, the interactions of gellan with milk proteins, especially caseins and whey lactoglobulins increased the total yield of cheese and reduced the loss of solids (mainly proteins) in the whey.
Also, water retention during cheese making was enhanced after the addition of gellan to milk. Ice cream can be improved by the addition of gellan, where it acts as effective bulking agent.