Importance

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Abstract

The present invention can efficiently and readily produce in a short time a matured food which is softened while retaining the original shape of the food material and in which a person who has difficulty in chewing and swallowing can also recognize what food is taken and take the food with a sense of satisfaction. In particular, the present invention can produce a matured food, in which mainly the connective tissue protein in an animal food material is degraded, the degree of the degradation is adjusted and the elasticity is reduced, so that the taste can be improved. The present invention has a degradative enzyme-impregnating step of uniformly impregnating inside of a food material with a degradative enzyme brought into contact with surface of the food material by pressure treatment and a maturing step of degrading an enzyme substrate contained in the food material by the action of the degradative enzyme while retaining the shape of the food material, wherein the degradative enzyme-impregnating step has a expansion step of expanding the food material by reduced pressure treatment with the shape retained and a compression step of compressing the expanded food material into a volume which is smaller than that of the original food material.

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First Claim