Keeping the crust crisp
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Freeze–thaw-stable fish fingers
Nippon Suisan, a large producer of fresh and frozen seafood products including fish, fish oil and feeds, has opened a European R&D centre in Food Valley.
During transportation the temperature of frozen fish fingers often fluctuates, causing water migration to the crust and resulting in less crispness. NIZO food research was approached by Nippon Suisan Europe to find a solution to this problem. Together they succeeded in developing a technique based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) for monitoring the freeze–thaw stability of fish fingers on a molecular level.
NMR can be used to determine water and oil mobility in products. The novelty of this method is the ability to quantify water mobility at temperatures below 0 °C. It turned out that exposure of the initially deep-frozen product (–18 °C) to a temperature of –5 °C resulted in increased water mobility, which persisted when the fish fingers were cooled back to –18 °C.
Project leader Hans Tromp is very exited because his findings give a handle to product developers to optimise ingredients and technology which suppress this undesirable water mobility.
Read the entire article, as published in Agrofood, September/ October 2011