The Effect of Gelling Agent Concentration on the Characteristic of Gel Produced From the Mixture of Semi-refined Carrageenan and Glukomannan

Carrageenan and konjac glucomannan mixture is synergistic in producing a gel with high gel strength, good and elastic texture, as well as low syneresis. The synergistic effect is a very crucial factor in the utilization of carrageenan and konjac glucomannan mixture extensively for both food and non-food purposes. The use of these two types of polysaccharides can also reduce dependence on imported gelling agents such as locust bean gum. This study aims to produce such concentration of semi-refined carrageenan and glucomannan mixture as best gelling agents by evaluating the physical properties of the resulted gel mixture in terms of gel strength, hardness, rigidity, syneresis, and gel micro structure. The experimental design used in this study is completely randomized design with two factors to compare namely proportion ratio of gel-forming material and concentration of gel-forming material. Data is then processed using analysis of variance and the Tukey ’s test. The results show that the concentration of gel-forming material 7% in comparison with semi-refined carrageenan and glucomannan mixture of 1: 1 has the highest gel strength value of 3361.14 g/cm 2 ; lowest syneresis value of 0.7%, with such dense and compact gel matrix form.