Ready meals
Ready meals
New findings on VivOX 4, an all-natural preservative that is produced and marketed by Vitiva, suggest that effective anti-rancidity protection is conferred for various types of meat-based ready meals. This versatile oil-soluble, water-dispersible formula helps increase shelf life and reduces warmed over flavour (WOF), while retaining the important organoleptic characteristics of the product. Production of meat-based ready meals includes thermal processing that affects the fats present in food and increases their oxidative instability. This instability is even greater when foods are battered and fried, due to oil pick up of fried products such as chicken nuggets, battered fish etc. During cooling, freezing, transportation and warehousing, there is an increased exposure to oxygen and light, which accelerates unwanted changes of ready meals such as rancidity, organoleptics characteristics and appearance of WOF. By adding allergen-free VivOX 4 formula, the shelf life of meat-based ready meals can be extended by 2-5 times in comparison to control samples that utilise traditional synthetic ingredients, while still maintaining the original taste and flavour profile.
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Animal protein
Nölke Pure Ingredients focusses natural animal protein concentrates. The company does not offer its customers “ready-made products”, but emphasises service and a high level of flexibility. All items manufactured at the Versmold site can be customised to meet clients’ individual requirements and specifications. The targeted use of different batches of raw materials for example, influences solubility and amino acid composition; the functionality of individual protein factors is defined by regulating the temperature and pH value. Fresh and natural ingredients are exclusively utilised to produce broths, stocks and extracts. Chicken, turkey and beef, as well as game and fish, provide the raw materials for the variety of choice products manufactured by the company. Production at the Versmold site focusses on wet goods; poultry extracts are also offered in powder form. Approximately 50% of the broths and stocks produced are exported, including halal-certified goods, specifically produced for the Muslim market. Animal protein concentrates are an indispensable ingredient of many convenience products. They are used in all types of ready meals such as soups, sauces, stocks, as well as pasta and pan-fried dishes. As chilled foods and frozen meals have been achieving high levels of sales in recent years, Nölke Pure Ingredients is participating in the high growth of this trend segment by focussing on the product area. The potential for ready meals has not been exploited – by far. The company’s cooperation with industrial customers
constantly opens up new application areas for functional proteins.

Heinrich Nölke GmbH & Co. KG
Versmold, Germany

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Animal fats
Animal fats
Cooking in animal fats is a traditional means of preparing many foods and beef dripping is key to various food applications. Beef dripping is an excellent frying fat with a very long frying life. Rancimate analysis results show that the frying performance of beef dripping is higher than of palm fat and even four times higher than of rapeseed oil. Beef dripping in baked foods improves the texture of rolls through a consistent pore structure as well as a good elasticity. A higher yield can be reached with a lower fat quantity than with butter and baking margarine, while rolls remain good and crispy. Even in instant soups and ready-made meals beef dripping is a superb ingredient for its high temperature resistance and its beef taste.

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Measuring antioxidant levels plays an important role in a host of applications including characterisation of food quality, control of food processing technologies, improvement of product shelf life, measurement of the antioxidative efficiency of food additives, authenticity control and development of novel formulae. Antioxidants are an essential part of the body’s defence mechanism against cell damage by free radicals. The Photochem analyser provides a rapid and accurate way of measuring water-soluble and lipidsoluble antioxidants in a single system. The instrument uses the principle of photochemiluminescence, combining very fast photochemical radical generation with highly sensitive luminometric detection. Extremely easy to use, each measurement takes less than three minutes. There is no complex or time-consuming sample preparation and only a few microlitres of sample are needed. Sampling, measurement and rinse cycles are performed completely automatically. The anti-oxidative capacity of the sample is measured by comparison with a calibration curve.
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Alternative to lecithin
Chocolate manufacturers are currently experiencing increased market pressure due to high prices and shortage of raw materials such as IP soy lecithin. One consequence of an inability to source the necessary lecithin could be that the manufacturer has to increase the total fat content in the chocolate e.g. from 32 % to 36 %, a recipe adjustment that would mean substantial increases in costs. Providing a new solution for chocolate manufacturers to avoid the current shortage situation of IP soy lecithin and to enable them to decrease recipe costs, Ammonium Phosphatide – Palsgaard AMP 4448 is an efficient alternative to lecithin in chocolate products. Significantly outperforming lecithin in terms of viscosity reduction in chocolate production, the new product does not have the well known ‘lecithin problem’ of increased viscosity above 0.4 % dosage, thus opening up new recipe innovations. The use of AMP 4448 means that the chocolate manufacturer can save up to 4 % cocoa butter, yet still achieve the same flow properties in the chocolate.

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