TECH PERSPECTIVE AARON HAND | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Creating a Succulent Roasted Chicken With Higher Yield GEA explains how replacing a traditional tumble-cook process with an inject-tumble-cook process, along with its latest-generation spiral oven, produces yield boosts of up to 10%.
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EA INTRODUCED its first CookStar—a double-spiral, two-zone oven—back in 1992, when fully cooked products were gaining popularity with consumers and fast food was beginning to take hold in Europe. Through the years, the equipment supplier has made upgrades to the CookStar line, such as improvements in capacity and airflow, an impingement zone, and three-phase cooking. Its latest generation, the CookStar 1000, released last year, includes an improved heat exchanger technology that generates up to 25% more heating capacity. In a recent webinar, not only do GEA’s experts detail the workings of the new oven, they explain the science behind the benefits of adding an extra injection step before cooking meat in the oven. Yields are improved by locking in juice marinades and by fast and precise cooking.
The physics behind water binding To fully understand the arguments for the best way to inject the meat with brine, GEA first took some time to explain the importance of the brine itself and how it is applied. “You receive your raw material in the factory, and you have your muscle in there. But on top of that, you have plenty of drip—that is the lack of water holding capacity,” explains Victoria Metaute, a GEA food technologist focused on the marination process. “The holding capacity is the viability of the meat to be able to sustain all the natural water through all the processes that you are going to put that meat through.” Of key importance is the pH balance of the meat. There will be a natural pH loss in the meat—and the more that pH level drops, the more water you will lose from the meat, Metaute explains. “That is very much attached to your end yield,” she says. To avoid pH depletion, the earlier you process the meat, the better. Keeping the pH well controlled between 5.5 and 6 will keep your protein
PHOTO COURTESY OF GEA
ligaments completely entangled, and will give you the spaces you need to insert the brine or to hold natural moisture. But also important is how the ingredients of that brine are combined. With water as the base, typically salt and phosphates are added. Those are functional ingredients that work well together, but the order of their addition is not trivial and is also not well understood, according to Metaute. “For example, I’m making my brine and I’m having my water, and now I put my salt, and after that I dissolve it, and I put my phosphate in. Later on, there are some stones in there. And that is the problem that is going to happen. You’re going to have undissolved functioning ingredients that are going to mess with your yield at the end of the process.” Instead, Metaute recommends adding the phosphate to the water before the salt. “Give it the time for it to be completely dissolved, and after that will be your salt,” she says. “Those two together will improve your pH. It will be increased and it will be out of the electrostatic point—where you’re actually running out of water.” Beyond that, you can add your other ingredients, such as starches and fibers, which will help hold moisture in. www.profoodworld.com
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| April 2022 |
For poultry brine injections, GEA recommends 2 mm injection needles with its MultiJector system for better brine distribution that does not destroy the structure of the meat.
PROFOOD WORLD
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