Cooking & Cooling
Validation
From Past To Present
The act of cooking may go back further than 1.5 million years ago and in modern times, the concept of quick, ready-to-eat meals gained wide popularity and acceptance. Technological innovations, such as the microwave and "assembly lines" of fast food, are just two examples of the hundreds of transformations that added convenience, speed, and low prices to the eating habits of millions of people.
Despite these changes, one concept never left humanity: the need for safe food. Food processors are facing many of the same challenges that their ancestors did, only on a much more global scale. To meet these challenges, we've arrived at the need for global standards for food safety and quality.
With all this history behind us, Quantum Food Solutions makes it easy for your food processing operation to add these standards.
What To Consider With Cooking & Cooling Validation
The safety of modern cooking systems comes down to sensors. Cooking equipment uses sensors to monitor their tasks in a variety of possible settings. As such, validating these systems means using robust, high-accuracy instruments.
A successful validation study needs to include a detailed description of the worst-case-scenario for the equipment under evaluation. Some critical considerations include, but are not limited to:
- Proper identification of cold and hot zones. This is affected by a variety of factors, such as loading practice (e.g. full vs. partial loads), irregular product sizes, more than one product size, wear and tear from equipment, uneven airflow, location of a product sensor, etc.
- Critical malfunction or miscalibration of probes or sensors (i.e. product, dry-bulb and wet-bulb)
- Additional stresses on the equipment during "peak" production periods (e.g., Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc.)
- Products are placed nearby generating touchers, which have a strong tendency to significantly change thermal loads to achieve adequate thermal lethality
- The uncertainty between batches (e.g., loading practices)
Quantum Cooking & Cooling Validation Services
Quantum Food Solution's cooking validation services use only the highest-accuracy instruments available. We closely monitor all the different factors required to achieve a proper cooking cycle, and our equipment provides real-time feedback to ensure issues can be corrected before the end of the cycle.
We also use validated predictive modelling tools like ComBase to analyze special or borderline cases. This includes identification of cold spots (to maximize thermal lethality), optimization of cooking and dwell time application (to minimize over-cooking and maximize yields), and optimization of loading practices (to maximize uniformity in product quality). Our expertise includes, but is not limited to, forced convection ovens like smokehouses and spiral ovens, kettles, chillers, freezers, defrosting rooms and other batch processes.
Quantum's safety consultancy services can also provide recommendations that will help you increase product throughput. It's our way of ensuring you have not just the safest food product, but the most profitable business!
