The pumpkin drying process directly determines the final quality of pumpkin drying, in addition to mastering the basic pumpkin processing process.
Pumpkin processing steps
The main steps include; raw material cleaning, sorting and cutting, soaking and bleaching, dehydration and packaging. Pumpkins with good flavor, smooth skin and orange-red flesh should be selected.
1 cleaning
Wash the squash in clean water.
2 finishing
First divide the washed pumpkin to remove the fruit belt, then divide it into two halves with a knife, and remove the outer skin, inner melon petals, seeds, etc. Cut it into thin slices of 3-4 mm or 6-7 mm (you can also create filaments with a wire cutter).
3 blanching
The cut melon slices are treated with steam or boiling water for 1-3 minutes. Then use it to cool quickly and drain the water.
Pumpkin drying process
Pumpkin slices: Put the blanched pumpkin slices into the drying room for water. The drying temperature is controlled at 45°C-60°C first, and then it can be gradually increased, but it should not exceed 70°C. Dry until the moisture content of the dry product is below 6%. Dehydrated squash slices should be pale yellow or orange-red, flakes or strings.
Pumpkin powder: dehydrate and control the dry product moisture to 14%. Then it will be puffed and crushed to make pumpkin powder. On the basis of pumpkin slices, pulverize with a pulverizer to prepare powdered rice, sieve through a 60-80 mesh sieve, and then carry out aseptic packaging with a vacuum packaging machine or a composite plastic powder food bag to produce general edible pumpkin powder.
