LU81665A1 - EDIBLE DEHYDRATED PRODUCTS AND THEIR MANUFACTURING PROCESS - Google Patents

Description

· *

DESCRIPTIVE MEMORY

FILED IN SUPPORT OF A REQUEST FOR

PATENT

FORMED BY

UNILEVER N.Y. for I Dehydrated edible products and their manufacturing process.

The present invention relates to dehydrated edible products and in particular products comprising pieces or particles of finely divided food, for example derived from vegetables and mashed meat.

. Dried foods capable of reconstitution by adding water are well known. They include, for example, cnnnofi. rie1 "(ipoQar'f.ç ot ήρς r" r> nriiii ts noiir M. Cfirtaîn. "; can be used for consumption shortly after reconstitution, for example in the next 1 to 2 minutes, while others require a longer maturation period to allow the food constituents to rehydrate, obviously the specification of the rehydration conditions depends on the nature of the constituents making up the food.

When the food contains pieces of dried meat or vegetables, cooking in boiling water for up to 20 minutes may be necessary and therefore such foods are not acceptable as products for immediate consumption.

Products for immediate consumption including pieces of dried food such as dried vegetables and dried meats are commercially available. They can be obtained by freezing pieces of the appropriate food. However, the pieces obtained by such a process do not always have all the desired characteristics: for example, the rehydrated product may be spongy and may be deficient in terms of flavor and odor, color or texture, so that it may not look like the original food material at all. For example, it has been found that dried and rehydrated pieces of tomato may be too light and spongy and lack taste. In addition, these products are also expensive.

Another source of dried edible products is described in the prior art (Belgian Patent No. 836.19½). They are obtained by preparing a dispersion of finely divided food material in an aerated gel of calcium alginate or calcium pectate, by cutting gel in pieces and drying these pieces. The use of an aeration agent is expensive and can in some cases also give an undesirable spongy texture in rehydrated pieces. This technique, however, also has drawbacks.

It has surprisingly been found that alginate gels containing finely divided food materials, for example mashed potatoes, after being cut and dried, can be such that they give pieces of dried food material which are acceptable for use in products for instant consumption.

The ability of alginate solutions to form films during drying is well known. As a result, it was not completely unpredictable that pieces of alginate gel also tended to form films after air drying, and in fact has been found to be so. In some cases, depending on the shape of the gel pieces before drying, you get a dried Croatian exterior with a hollow interior. Such an effect can be obtained when drying gelled cubes. It should also be noted that the dried materials! thus obtained have very poor rehydra-tion characteristics.

On the contrary, by including a finely divided food material in the gel matrix according to the present invention as described below, an excellent texture reminiscent of that of pieces of vegetables or meat can be obtained after rehydration of the pieces of gel dried with air. Without wishing to be limited by any theory, it is believed that the presence of the particles of the finely divided food hinders the collapse of the alginate network with the formation of associated film and gives particles in the dried products. of the ground food dispersed throughout a matrix of dried alginate. Food particles are thus free to hydrate when water is added, but by doing so they are prevented from being separated by the alginate matrix.

This results in discrete rehydrated particles.

According to the invention, there is provided a dehydrated edible product obtained by drying a composition comprising a finely divided food material, for example sprayed or mashed, dispersed in an edible gel (and preferably thermostable) which has not been subjected to aeration and which has a gel resistance corresponding to a value of at least 200 grams when it is determined by the method defined below.

As the gel has not been subjected to aeration, it does not exhibit any increase in volume before drying or it exhibits little, resulting from the involuntary incorporation of bubbles to an extent insufficient to make the material a foam , for example not more than $ 10, preferably 5% or less, for example less than $ 1, for example $ 0.5 ·

Advantageously, the product is capable of satisfactory rehydration in 60 to 120 seconds of immersion in water, for example in hot water. Obviously, the gels are prepared without the addition of aeration agents or foaming agents proper: all constituents which are added for other reasons and which are capable of promoting aeration are preferably limited to levels at which all effects of foam production are negligible.

In order to obtain a dried product capable of satisfactory rehydration, the drying is preferably carried out by air drying or by oven drying.

The gel resistance can be measured with a commercial Instron (trademark) testing machine which compresses a gel of defined dimensions between two plates at a defined speed: the stress increases to a maximum at the flow threshold and the stress at the flow threshold measures the resistance of the gel. The gels used in the present invention have a gel strength of at least 200 grams for a sample of cylindrical gel 12 mm in diameter and 12 mm in height, compressed at 5 cm / min. Advantageously, the resistances are even stronger, corresponding to 350 or more and can conveniently reach 600 or 700 or more.

A very advantageous process for producing gels which gives satisfactory dehydrated products according to the present invention is a quick setting process (for example with a gel time less than 30 minutes, for example 6 minutes), for example as described in British patent application 36 085/78}, the content of which is incorporated here by reference. The process described comprises mixing solid particles of calcium sulphate, for example in the form of an aqueous slurry with a finely divided food material, rapidly. in a gellable aqueous sol of alginate or pectate i with a low content of methoxy groups, and then under conditions free from shearing, the solid calcium sulphate is allowed to dissolve and the mixture to gel.

However, other methods for producing dehydrating gels can also be used in the implementation of the present invention, for example that described in British patents H0 1 3 & 9 198 and 199}, the content of which is also incorporated here by reference: it relates to the rapid preparation of a mixture comprising an alginate or pectate sol with a low content of methoxy groups, a source of calcium ions (for example dicalcium phosphate) which, in the absence of an agent capable of releasing the calcium ions (for example an acid) provides insufficient calcium ions to gel the soil, pulp or fruit puree and an agent capable of releasing the calcium ions there and then the mixture is allowed to gel prepared under conditions substantially free from shear.

Using the present invention, dried pieces of vegetables and meats have been produced which exhibit excellent color, flavor and texture characteristics after reconstitution for 1 to 2 minutes in water.

* After its formation, the gel can be cut to the desired shape, for example into cubes, strips, and dried using industrial air drying equipment, for example an oven or a forced draft dryer. The preferred temperature range for drying is 60-80 ° C. The use of lower drying temperatures results in longer drying times while the use of higher temperatures can cause unacceptable loss of flavor and charring.

As a variant, drying can be carried out or facilitated by means of a vacuum and / or a desiccant such as or * 1 f 7 of calcium. For most applications, it is advantageous to dry the particles to a final moisture content of k- to $ 12, preferably from ^ to $ 9> for example to $ 7 · The choice of suitable drying conditions depends on the type of the gelled pulverized food to be dried and its intended use. These conditions are easily determined by simple experimentation. It may be advantageous to carry out the drying in two stages with intermediate storage for a certain period to allow the water content of the partially dried material to be balanced.

When the products are used as ingredients in food for immediate consumption, the best results are obtained by rehydration for 1 to 2 minutes in boiling water.

When necessary, rehydration can be improved and the texture of the rehydrated particulate matter can be appropriately changed by the addition of a texture modifying agent during the gel preparation step. Such texture modifiers are normally of a protein or carbohydrate nature, for example caseinates, albumin, gelatin, starch derivatives, cellulose derivatives, carrageenans, gum xanthan, etc. For economic reasons, an inexpensive texture modifying agent is preferred. It has been found that precooked or modified starches in a proportion of about 0.5-3 $ by weight relative to the finely divided gelled food give acceptable results.

The dehydrated products according to the present invention can be in the form of particles, slices, small blocks or other regular pieces or not obtained conveniently.

Although the products according to the present invention can be used in an acceptable manner in products for immediate consumption, they retain their structural integrity and their organoleptic quantity under more prolonged and extreme conditions of rehydration, for example boiling in water for 20 minutes and can therefore be used generally as ingredients in dry food products, for example powdered soups.

The invention is illustrated by the following examples, the table below indicating the composition of the mixtures used in these examples.

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- EXAMPLE 1 -

A gel containing b0% by weight of finely divided tomato (28-30 $ solids) is prepared by mixing together an alignate phase and a finely divided food phase, having the compositions indicated in the table above, and allowing the mixture to solidify under conditions free from shearing. The gel is cut into parallelipip-edes having edges varying between Û, 1 * and 2.0 cm which are dried in an industrial dryer with forced draft at 75 for hours. The dried product has an average moisture content of $ 8.7 and is rehydrated in boiling water after about a minute to make tomato slices with an excellent pot size and pleasant texture.

- EXAMPLE 2 -

A gel is prepared as in Example 1 containing ^ * + 0 $ by weight of finely divided cooked chicken using for the alginate phase and the finely divided food phase the compositions indicated in the table. The gel is cut into 0.8 cm cubes which are dried in a forced draft dryer at 70 ° C for three hours. The dried product has an average moisture content of $ 8.1 and upon rehydration in boiling water achieves a fibrous texture somewhat resembling that of cooked chicken after two minutes.

- ex | mpl | L3 - 0n is prepared as in Example 1 a gel containing 30 $ by weight of finely divided red pepper, using the formulas indicated in the table. The gel is cut into parallelepipeds (1.5 cm × 0.6 cm × 0.1 cm) which are dried in a laboratory-scale fluidized bed drier (model FDB / L72 from PRL Engineering Ltd) at 70 ° C for 2.5 hours. The dried product with an average moisture content of $ 6.1 still has its intense red color after nine months of storage and is rehydrated in boiling water after about a minute to give simulated pieces of pepper with excellent characteristics of color, flavor and texture.

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Claims (9)

1, - A dehydrated edible product comprising a dried edible gel, characterized in that the gel contains, before drying, a finely divided dispersed food material, that it is free from aeration, and that it has a gel resistance corresponding to a stress at the flow threshold of at least s, 200 grams when a gel cylinder of 12 mm in diameter and 12 mm in height is subjected to compression between plates approaching one another speed of 5 cm / min, so that the dehydrated product can be used for rehydration. 2. A dehydrated edible product according to claim 1, characterized in that the gel was produced by the implementation of a process according to which solid particles of calcium sulphate are rapidly mixed in an aqueous gelable alginate sol or of pectate with a low content of f methoxy groups and then, under conditions free from salting, the solid calcium sulphate is allowed to dissolve and the mixture to gel. 3 · - A dehydrated edible product according to claim 1, characterized in that le.gel was obtained by the implementation of a process according to which a mixture is rapidly prepared comprising an alginate or a pectate with a low content of methoxy groups, a source of calcium ions which in the absence of an agent capable of releasing calcium ions provides calcium ions in an amount insufficient to gel the soil, pulp or fruit puree and an agent capable to release the calcium ions and the mixture thus formed is allowed to gel under conditions substantially free of shear. H · .- An edible dehydrated product according to claim 1, characterized in that the gel comprises an algi-nate or pectate gel with a low content of methoxy groups. A dehydrated edible product according to one of claims 1 to characterized in that the resistance of the gel corresponds to a stress at the flow threshold of at least 350 grams under the defined conditions. 6.- A dehydrated edible product according to one of claims 1 to 5j characterized in that the dried gel provides significant rehydration in 60-120 seconds of immersion in hot water. 7 · - A dehydrated edible product according to one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the gel has been dried in air between 60 ° C and 80 ° C. 8. A dehydrated edible product according to one of claims 1 to 7, characterized in that the dried product has a moisture content of between and 12 # by weight. 9. A dehydrated edible product according to one of claims 1 to 8, characterized in that the gel also comprises an agent modifying the texture chosen from caseinates, ai-bumine3 gelatin, starch derivatives, derivatives cellulose, carrageenans and xanthans. 10. A rehydrated edible product formed by rehydrating a dehydrated edible product according to claim 1 in hot water for up to 20 minutes. 11. A process for the production of a dehydrated edible product, according to which an edible gel is dried, characterized in that the edible gel is prepared with a finely divided food material dispersed therein, has not subjected to aeration and to a gel resistance corresponding to a stress at the flow threshold of at least 200 grams, when a gel cylinder of 12 mm in diameter and 12 mm in height is subjected to compression between plates approaching each other at a speed of 5 cm / min, so that the drying step forms a rehydratable dehydrated product. * "!