Nutritional and Chemical Composition of Frying, Smoked Dried, Freezing, Solar Dried and Salting of African Mud Catfish

An experiment was conducted on Nutritional and chemical composition of frying, smoked, freezing, solar dried and salting of African mud catfish, to monitor nutrient and mineral lost as a result of preservative method, 100 (one hundred) pieces table size African mud catfish was purchased from Kwara state Ministry of Agriculture farm in Ilorin, the fishes were then divided into five (5) portions of twenty (20) pieces each and each portion were preserved by frying, smoking, freezing, solar dried and lastly by salting, after which both proximate and mineral content of the fish samples were then carried out and, it was observed that , the crude lipid of the fried fish was higher (P<0.05) followed by freezing, smoked dried and lastly salting which is the least. No significant difference occurred in crude fibre (P>0.05), except the smoked dried and freezing that is the least. The moisture content of freezing and salting was better (P<0.05) when compared to other methods. The phosphorus (Ph), Pottassium (K), Zinc (Zn), and Magnessiu (Mg) was higher in smoked dried (P<0.05) while Calcium (Ca) was higher in salting method and therefore we concluded that Frying retained most of the nutrients, followed by solar drying and smoke drying for African mud catfish, but the minerals are better retained by smoked dried fish when compared to others.