Indigenous knowledge, optimum recipe and storage stability of khurma, a cereal based traditional Nepalese product.

Abstract Khurma is a cereal based food indigenous to hilly regions of Nepal. It is a deep fried flour confection prepared by mixing wheat flour, rice flour, semolina, ghee, sugar, spices mixture, milk and water. Despite its popularity, the scientific documentation and researches in khurma is scarce. Moreover, quality of khurma is often subject to variation due to differences in recipe and the data on storage stability is unavailable. Therefore, in this study recipe of the product was optimized using sensory analysis and the optimized product was analysed for physicochemical parameters and storage stability. Proximate analysis showed that optimized khurma had 2.48 ± 0.12%, 36.87 ± 0.34%, 9.51 ± 0.47%, 0.48 ± 0.03%, 0.06 ± 0.01% and 50.60 ± 0.82% of moisture, fat, protein, total ash, crude fiber and carbohydrates respectively. Moreover, product was more stable in laminated packaging material compared to polyethene (PE) package. The results showed that khurma can be served and promoted as an energy dense snack.