No burn-on steam cooking
Burn-on is a major challenge for food manufacturers, particularly when cooking dairy-based sauces. It can cause batches of food to be rejected and wasted because of dark spots and colour distortion in the end product - but not with Steam Infusion.
Eliminate burn-on
During trials under our £1 million Innovate UK project into advanced heating and mixing, we discovered that Steam Infusion can prevent burn-on while maintaining fresh flavours and colours in cheese sauces, as well as in a whole variety of other products.
The first image is a cheese sauce made in a conventional steam-jacketed vessel and scrape surface agitator, with a cook time of 60 minutes. The second image shows a cheese sauce made with Steam Infusion in just 20 minutes with the agitator switched off. Both sauces were emptied immediately from the vessel, and the image instantly captured to show the differences with the methods – the pictures really do speak for themselves!
Steam jacket dairy sauce cook
Steam Infusion dairy sauce cook
Prevent Maillard reactions
Steam Infusion is an extremely efficient heating process. Without a steam jacket, there are no hot points for product to burn on to; whether you use the In-Tank or In-Line Vaction™ Pump. With both pump types, the low-pressure vapour phrase coupled with the short residence time means the ingredients are not exposed to excess temperatures during processing. This ensures the sugars in the sauces do not caramelise, preventing Maillard reactions and subsequent burn-on. This in turn reduces the occurrence of acrylamide; a hot topic for consumers all over the world.
The In-Tank Vaction™ Pump is designed to sit inside the vessel and cook by injecting high-pressure food grade steam into the product, cooking from the centre of the vessel so the product doesn’t burn on to the sides. What’s more, the lance itself is double-skinned, providing insulation against burn-on.
Furthermore, on a traditional steam jacket system, there are often restrictions relating to viscosity due to the amount of burn-on contamination. Thick sauces, those with a Bostwick between two and five, easily stick to the hot vessel surface, in turn burning the ingredient to the pan and resulting in dark flecks. With Steam Infusion, viscous products can be cooked with zero burn-on as there is no exposure to hot surfaces as in traditional systems.
“Manufacturers must constantly balance the needs of their Operations and NPD teams. Operations are looking for ways to reduce processing times, either with a shorter cook or reducing CIP downtime, while NPD teams strive to deliver the very best product to meet consumer demand. Oftentimes it can seem like these two aims are mutually exclusive but with Steam Infusion, you can achieve a fast cook with no burn-on without compromising on the organoleptic qualities to please the NPD team – and your customers.”
Additional benefits
The lack of burn-on also increases yields as no product is wasted and product quality is more consistent – the first batch of the day is the same as the last. Fast heating with Steam Infusion can also preserve the natural colours of ingredients, improving the visual appearance to consumers.
Fast cooking with no burn-on enables CIP times to be reduced on average by 40%. The conventional steam jacket shown above took 2 hours to clean with harsh chemicals, whereas the Steam Infusion method was washed down with water in just 10 minutes. Customers have found that up to 10 batches can be run back to back without a full CIP thanks to the lack of burn-on and subsequent vessel fouling.