Freezing is an important refrigeration process widely used in food preservation. Our study on freezing prodess of a two component food (chicken nugget) divided in to four main parts: i)the effect of freezing conditions (-20, -30 and -40 ?C) on physical properties of crumb and crust of chicken nugget such as color and cracking(measured by image analyzing), Young’s modulus and Poison ratio (by compression test and image analyzing) .ii)Effect of freezing conditions on physical properties of crumb and crust of chicken nugget after final frying such as color, cracking, crust flaking, oil uptake and Young’s modulus. iii)Determination and prediction of thermophysical properties such as thermal conductivity (heat source probe, and fitted by krisher model), specific heat and enthalpy (DSC), surface heat transfer coefficient (transient temperature determination), density (seeds displacement), water activity (hygrometer) and diffusion coefficient (Drying data). iv)Heat and mass transfer modeling of chicken nugget during freezing by MATLAB software and validation of model by comparing with experimental data. The results show that freezing conditions significantly affect on physical, thermophysical and thermomechanical properties of crumb and crust of chicken nugget. Results of heat and mass transfer modeling was in good agreement with experimental data so we can use the results of developed model. Keywords: Chicken nugget, Freezing, Frying, Thermomechanical properties, Thermophysical properties, Heat and mass modeling.
