Tailor-made buckwheat starch/konjac glucomannan/fatty acid complex gels used for its quality-retrogradation behavior improvement: Regulatory role of fatty acid chain-length

The rational construction of gel-tailored foods has received increasing attention, and this work establishes a novel ternary gel system by incorporating konjac glucomannan (KGM) and fatty acids. The results showed that the introduction of palmitic acid and stearic acid weakened the ordered structure of the system. Meanwhile, incorporating KGM enhanced the system's cohesion, which is evident in the increased densification and aggregation behavior within the gel network. Meanwhile, both KGM and fatty acids led to a significant increase in the viscoelasticity of the system. During storage, the crosslinking matrix formed by the two reduced water migration and water loss, slowing down the increase of system hardness (from 784.25 g to 305.22 g) and effectively prolonging the shelf-life of the product while maintaining the color properties of the gel. These results provide ideas for functionalized gel food design and development while enriching the application scope of miscellaneous grain fractions in foodstuffs.