Gluten-free ready meal products could be one way to get more pulses on grocery store shelves. This NAIT engineer is working with NAIT chefs to develop a line of products.

Alberta pulse growers are anxious to get their crops on Canadians’ tables more often. What are the best opportunities?

According to Paolo Mussone, two of the fastest-growing categories in the food industry could suit pulses very well: gluten-free foods and the ready meals now sold by many retailers. Put the two together and they spell what could be a significant market opening for pulses.

“Sales of gluten-free products in Canada were $5 billion in 2016, a 20% increase over 2015,” said Mussone, Applied Bio/Nanotechnology Industrial Research Chair at NAIT in Edmonton. “A lot of ready meals tend to contain unhealthy amounts of salt and sugar. We are trying to use pulse flour to develop a product that has all the fibre and nutritional value of pulses, but still tastes good, and would also be gluten-free.”

In June 2017, with Alberta Pulse Growers funding, Mussone began a six-month project to further develop a line of gluten-free ready meals based on pulse flour. The project will be a collaboration with Maynard Kolskog, a NAIT Culinary Arts instructor and food researcher, who already has a proven recipe for pasta dough made with pulse flour rather than wheat flour.

Mussone’s idea is to scale up Kolskog’s recipes and develop products, working with companies that manufacture lasagna noodles and agnolotti, which are similar to ravioli.

Recipe development, engineering and sensory work

Mussone and his chef colleagues will refine the recipes while developing characterization, testing and production protocols that will help local businesses commercialize the new dough concept.

Dough samples will be analyzed using advanced microscopy and rheology instrumentation that’s available at NAIT. Mussone’s nanotechnology expertise will help ensure the dough formulations can be scaled to high-volume industrial extrusion equipment. “When you remove the gluten, you lose elasticity,” Mussone said, “so the pulse flour will still need to have the level of elasticity that you want in products like lasagna noodles.”

There’s a lot more to producing gluten-free ready meals than perfecting the recipe and production engineering. Taste will make or break the success of these products as a potentially significant new market for pulses. As a final step in this project, sensory experts and panels at the University of Alberta will make sure the taste of these products will meet consumer expectations.

How much market potential is there in gluten-free doughs made with pulse flour? Even in this project’s early stages, the NAIT team has already been contacted by a pasta company and pizza dough maker expressing interest in this work. Mussone is confident that this project can eventually open new doors for pulses and pulse growers.

“I would confidently say that there is definitely large market potential for growth here,” said Mussone.

Project at a glance

Project title:                Develop a novel line of gluten-free ready meal products from Alberta-based pulses

Project lead:                Paolo Mussone, NAIT

Total value of project: $25,000

Start date:                   March 1, 2017

Completion date:        August 31, 2018