Abstract

Bambara groundnuts are highly nutritious yet underutilized due to its hard-to-cook (HTC) properties. Antinutrients are one of the causes in inducing HTC that prolongs cooking time. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of antinutrients, soaking and cooking on the cooking quality of 6 genotypes of Bambara groundnuts. Bambara groundnuts were grounded, sieved through 40 mesh size and assessed for antinutrients tannin and phytate. Bambara groundnuts were cooked after 16 hours of soaking and cooking quality was determined by recording the time required for the beans to achieve hardness of 27N at 75% compression. It was found that only tannin contribute to the hardness of beans. There are significant difference (P < 0.05) between cooking time ranging from 2.24-2.74 hours with tannin content ranging from 2.05-6.03mg/ml but not phytate. However, antinutrients significantly (P<0.05) reduced up to 99.85% for tannin and 99.25% for phytate after cooking and soaking. Soaking reduced cooking time significantly. In summary, tannin contributes significantly to the difference in cooking time for Bambara groundnuts unlike phytate. Soaking is more effective than cooking in reducing cooking time.