At Frontline Food Consultants and Engineers, our services as a Canning Food Products Consultant involve offering consultancy services focusing on shelf life, quality and product safety together with preserving original taste. Preserving is a safer method of packing food items in sealed airtight containers and involves fruits, vegetables, soups, and sauces. Our team of expert Canning consultants offers you insights on how to structure your formulations and processes to get the best out of your prepared meals out of your cans.
Equipment Selection and Procurement support is available to help you select the suitable canning machinery for production while Installation and Commissioning services will assist with launching your operations. Using our Regulatory Compliance and Packaging Solutions, your canned products shall meet safety requirements to satisfy consumers while at the same time being packed in ways that retain their freshness to a consumer’s satisfaction.
What is Canning?
Canning starts with portioning and preparation of the various components to be included in the can. Fruits and vegetables may be washed, skinned, sliced, or chopped while on the other hand meats may be boiled, fried, sliced, or diced. Heating is followed by portioning the food into sterile containers including metal cans or glass jars with a lid that affords hermetical sealing. The containers are then put in a canning retort or a pressure cooker to be subjected to a definite action temperature, normally in the range of 115°C to 121°C. This step kills all the undesirable microorganisms such as bacteria, molds and yeasts, and alters the enzymes, which would otherwise spoil the food in due course.
The temperature and processing time differ according to the kind of food to be subjected to canning, whereas for low-acid food such as meat and vegetables, the temperatures and the periods are higher than that for high-acid food such as fruits and tomatoes. After sterilization, the cans or jars are rapidly cooled and the vacuum formed as the lid is sealed evacuates all air within the container and so inhibits spoiling. This vacuum seal is important with regard to the shelf life of the product, which is typical for this type of food.
The Canning Process
- Preparation:
- Cleaning and Cutting: The food used in fruits for the pulp and the ingredients used in khichdi are properly washed and chopped to a similar size. Cleaning breaks the biofilm and decreases the microbial count on the objects’ surface.
- Blanching: Such pre-treatments as blanching involve brief cooking (85-95°C for 1-5 minutes) of foods such as vegetables in khichdi or fruits for pulps. This step also suspends immature enzyme activity that may reduce flavor, color and texture properties of food, as well as gets rid of airspace that might hinder heat conduction.
- Filling:
- Objective: Heat transfer and preservation should be generally appropriate.
- Details: Liquid or semi-liquid products like fruit pulp, khichdi, or flavored milk are placed in sterilized cans or jars. Spices like brine, syrup or water are put so that there are voids within the can to allow even heating during canning.
- Sealing:
- Objective: They must be hermetically sealed to reduce or eliminate the growth of microbes on food items.
- Details: Lids are then applied to the containers and mechanically seamed or hermetically sealed by other means. This helps to ensure that after processing no contaminants such as air and microorganisms get into the containers.
- Processing:
- Objective: Mobility of water and nutrients and microbial destruction and enzyme inactivation.
- Details: Heating of the sealed containers is done in one of the following procedures:
- Water Bath Canning: Designed for highly acidic products such as fruit pulps and jams that are heated using boiling water treatment at a temperature of one hundred degrees Celsius depending on the type and size of the product.
- Pressure Canning: Necessary for bland foods such as khichdi and selected vegetable preparations, in which foods are processed at high pressure (between 0.5 and 1.5 atm) to attain temperatures higher than 121°C to eliminate Clostridium botulinum spores and other dangerous microorganisms.
- Cooling:
- Objective: Time to stop all activity in the cooking process and set the vacuum seal.
- Details: After processing, containers are quickly cooled to stop further cooking by flooding with water sprays or immersing in cold water achieving a vacuum seal that contributes positively to product quality and preserved shelf-life.
Types of Canning
- Water Bath Canning: Suitable where food with a high acidic content is being processed such as fruit pulps, jams, jellies, and pickles. It is cooked in boiling water, which means most of the microorganisms are eliminated so as the food.
- Pressure Canning: Essential for items like khichdi, flavored milk, and a number of vegetable dishes prepared with low acidic content. This method involves a pressure canner to generate heat of a deeper level required in the elimination of the destructive bacteria and spoors.
Advantages of Canning
- Extended Shelf Life: Mainly helps to increase substantially the shelf life of food products, thus making products suitable for storage for a certain time.
- Nutritional Retention: Helps maintain the nutritive value, taste, and mouthfeel characteristics of the food offered.
- Convenience: Offers processed foods in the form of Completely Knocked Down (CKD) initially and semi-processed foods which enroll limited cooking time to serve the needs for convenience foods.
- Safety: elimination of pathogenic microorganisms through the application of high temperatures during food processing.