Meat + Poultry - April 2009 - 80

COOKING SYSTEMS

Chicken parts are exiting a Twin Drum Spiral
Oven. (Photo courtesy of Heat and Control)

Surmiak responds, "For reconstitution
at home, fully cooked retail products are the safest. Teenagers can just
nuke them in a microwave. For foodservice, breaded products are usually only par-fried and non-breaded
products are fully cooked [which is
safer in restaurants and yields faster
reconstitution]."
Trends in fully cooked products
include more product variety. "The
most prevalent trend in the last few
years was glazed products," Surmiak
says. "This trend started as glazing
prior to cooking and then glazing
prior to freezing and then in both
places. Now people are trying glazing after freezing."
Sliced/diced, fully cooked chicken
products, both white meat and dark
meat, for fajitas, salads, etc., are very
popular in today's marketplace. An increasing variety of chicken wings are being featured in different ﬂavors - there
are many dedicated lines in the U.S. doing full cooking of wings only.
One common challenge processors face in cooking meat and poultry
products deals with line yield. "Keeping yield as high as possible to make
money [is the goal for processors],"
Surmiak says. "Cooking equipment is
a large part of the solution for [achieving] yields."
More processors are fully cooking
product today for several reasons, says
Doug Kozenski, Sales Manager Process
Prepared, Heat and Control, Hayward,
Calif. The fast growth of the RTE market has driven this change.
"Processors must be able to provide
a wide range of fully-cooked products
to a wide range of customers to be competitive in the market," he adds.
Much of the foodservice industry
needs fully cooked products for fast instore or on-site preparation, Kozenski
says. "Fully cooking the product before
it leaves the plant also helps processors
maintain good food-safety protocols,"
he adds. "While there are times when
80

MEAT&POULTRY

April 2009

cooked product is contaminated and
recalled, the majority of recalls are with
partially cooked or raw product."
One major trend in the marketplace
is for processors to have the capability to fully and efﬁciently cook a wide
range of products, Kozenski says. Processors are always trying to maximize
their yields and product quality, and
they also have to be ﬂexible in what
they are capable of producing.
"It is becoming a rare luxury to
have a single line dedicated to a single product," he adds. "Most new
processing lines being
installed need to be as
CookStar TurboCook ovens
enable processors to
achieve 15 percent shorter
cook times, allowing
for increased overall
production. (Photo courtesy
of CFS North America Inc.)

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ﬂexible as possible to allow for the
widest range of products produced.
This can require a line to include batter and breading capabilities, frying
[both full and par-fry] and oven capabilities. This equipment also needs to
be either portable or easily by-passed
when not needed."
All processors are challenged to
ensure their products are fully and
safely cooked while maximizing their
yields and product quality. Processors

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Meat + Poultry - April 2009

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