The modern consumer shows a clear preference for convenience. It combines the obvious demand for safe, healthy and tasty food with easy to prepare and variation. Food processors responded by providing a wide range of choices, including products that were given an extra flavour and a mouth-watering appearance by means of a coating. Product differentiation often increases sales but can be a burden for the food manufacturer. It demands a high level of efficiency, flexibility and above all process control.
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By Wiebe van der Sluis, Doetinchem, the Netherlands
It is widely known that edible coatings can improve the quality of fresh or frozen processed meat, poultry, and seafood products. Coatings first of all create a typical taste and texture. But they also slow down moisture/weight loss, reduce lipid oxidation and discoloration, and enhance product appearance in retail packages. Furthermore they eliminate dripping, seal in volatile flavours, and function as carriers of food additives such as antimicrobial and antioxidant agents.
Food processors appreciate these positive characteristics and can choose from a long list of coatings to prepare a wide range of foods, including meat, poultry, vegetables and meat replacers such as Valess and Tivall. These coated products are in high demand by caterers, restaurants and food retailers. They prefer large, often frozen, volumes of palatable and easy to prepare products with a highly standardised structure, size and weight. In addition, the consumer of tomorrow demands safe and healthy food, but also wants convenience since the busy lifestyle does not include spending many hours on preparing lunch or dinner. Coated food can meet all those desires.
Fresh and frozen production
The many coating options available today generate opportunities for food processors to distinguish themselves from their competitors by creating unique products of top quality.
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| Modern process and product control systems ensure a uniform high quality end product at the highest productivity level. |
Numerous food companies have taken on this challenge and choose either to specialise in the production of (deep frozen) bulk products at high capacity and or the production of lower volumes of fresh/chilled products with the possibility for fast reaction to a change in consumer preferences.Fresh and chilled food producers frequently deal with high product features at lower volumes for a wide range of products. They face a short response time when market demands change. This usually necessitates flexible production lines with capacities ranging from 500-2000 kg/hr. Formed or natural substrates have to be of top quality and when using a coating it has to be appetising and supporting the look of the end product. Producers therefore have to make use of a high quality batter and end-coating.
Bulk producers mainly focus on the frozen food markets both in retail and food service and usually choose for a less flexible line to deliver just a few commodity foods, like formed chicken fingers or tenders, that can be kept for quite some time in stock. Further differentiation between processing line solutions is determined by the market segment the producer delivers to. Markets asking for a low margin bulk product with less critical product quality require a maximum cost focus and maximum production efficiency. This usually results in a less flexible high capacity line in a traditional form-coat-fry-cook set-up. Such a simple line can operate with maximised line output and allows using relatively low cost coatings. All what counts here is high speed (at a capacity of up to 6000 kg/hr) and maximum utilisation of the machines.
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Source: World Poultry, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2011
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