Patent ID: 7087720

Claim:
A process of preparing a protein isolate, which comprises: (a) crushing oil seeds to form oil and oil seed meal therefrom, (b) solvent extracting the oil seed meal to recover residual oil therefrom, (c) recovering solvent from the extracted oil seed meal by heating the same at a temperature of about 100° C. or less to provide a toasted oil seed meal, (d) extracting the toasted oil seed meal to cause solubilization of protein in said toasted oil seed meal and to form an aqueous protein solution having a pH of about 5 to about 6.8, (e) separating the aqueous protein solution from residual oil seed meal, (f) increasing the protein concentration of said aqueous protein solution while maintaining the ionic strength substantially constant by using a selective membrane technique to provide a concentrated protein solution, (g) diluting said concentrated protein solution into chilled water having a temperature of below 15° C. to cause the formation of discrete protein particles in the aqueous phase in the form of micelles, (h) settling the protein micelles to form an amorphous, sticky, gelatinous, gluten-like protein micellar mass, and (i) recovering the protein micellar mass from supernatant, the protein micellar mass having a protein content of at least 100 wt % as determined by Kjeldahl nitrogen ×6.25 on a dry weight basis.