VSD Food Machinery | Efficiënt

A third challenge is the fact that traditional recipes are often not efficiently designed. A cook, for example, can first boil his potatoes to get them well-cooked and roast them after to make their skin nice and crispy. Such a sequence of steps is unacceptable at an industrial scale.

Separate processes

The separate processes take up too much time and an unnecessary amount of heat is lost. Moreover, a product will lose many of its natural juices, and its characteristic flavour along with it. This can be solved by using an oven that provides the right balance of moist air (for cooking) and dry air (for the crispy skin). To this end, VSD has developed intelligent cooking and grilling programs. These programs start off with a high temperature and a high air velocity. Special equipment measures the products’ core temperature, which at some point will no longer rise. This means that the product is no longer able to absorb heat. When this happens, the temperature and air velocity are automatically lowered. They will be raised again only when the core temperature is on the rise once more.

The fact that the process is adjusted according to the measured core temperature is unique. It allows our machines to work more efficiently than those using standard cooking programs, while the total processing time remains the same. This is in contrast to cooking in steps or delta-t cooking.

P and C values

On the whole, an industrial process must meet a series of requirements. The process must maintain the desired pasteurisation value (P) while the cooking losses (C values) must be kept as small as possible. The process must be energy-efficient, but must still conform to the right FH value and cannot take too long. VSD’s intelligent cooking programs are capable of coordinating all these values. The user indicates the duration of the original process, after which the program selects the most efficient cooking program on the basis of that duration. It is important, however, that the given time is realistic; shortening the production time is not feasible. The program ensures that the desired P value is achieved while keeping the products’ THT values constant.