Demystifying the production process and seasoning of puffed food
The common food in life, you must have eaten it, but you don’t know how it is made. Its name is puffed food. Although it sounds unfamiliar, you have tasted its fragrant and crunchy taste at different stages of life. : For example, baby rice crackers, breakfast cereal chips, party snacks, popcorn for a movie date, or even rice cakes at a wedding banquet are one of its ever-changing appearances. When the sound is heard, you are not only tasting snacks, but also full of memories.
The so-called puffed food is mainly made of grains, potatoes or beans as raw materials, and is made by pressurizing, heating or extrusion, etc., so that the structure and volume of the food are changed, showing a porous and fluffy taste. However, what kind of magic power does puffing have, so that ordinary raw materials such as corn, wheat, potatoes, and rice can be transformed into various shapes such as circles, triangles, spirals, and stars, and they taste crispy and crunchy? A professor from the Department of Food Science of Fu Jen Catholic University pointed out that if you want to understand the puffing effect, you can start with the principle of popcorn. The raw material of popcorn is dry corn kernels with a hard shell, which functions like a pressure cooker. Once heated, the moisture inside the corn kernels is heated, and the pressure gradually increases. The steam expands, opens the corn shell, and pushes out the soft gelatinous batter formed by gelatinizing the starch granules in the corn kernel.
Because the water vapor that instantly expands inside the corn kernels is more than one place, they are like small bombs inside the corn, and they explode at the same time, causing many small bubbles in the internal tissue of the corn, and the overall volume also increases. After the corn pops, the small bubbles fuse together, cool and solidify, and the water vapor evaporates at the same time, which reduces the water content. Therefore, heating, and sometimes pressurizing, ingredients containing starch and moisture causes the water vapor between the ingredients to open up the overall structure of the food (that is, the popping of popcorn). This series of reaction processes is puffing. The common popped rice in the street is also made by the same principle, the difference is that the popped rice does not have a hard shell, and the source of pressure is a special pressure cooker. The unique pound sound of popped rice is because when the pressure cooker is turned on, the pressure in the pot is suddenly released, the moisture in the rice grains is instantly converted into gas, and the high-pressure gas inside is too late to release the sound.
When food factories make all kinds of puffed foods, they mainly use extruders. The extruder is different from the pressure cooker of popped rice. It can accept granular or powdered raw materials, and combined with functions such as stirring, kneading, and cooking, it can also use different die holes to make three-dimensional shapes such as animals and letters. Since it is also heated and sterilized at the same time, and the moisture content is reduced, the shelf life of puffed food can be extended without preservatives. According to the production method, puffed food can be further subdivided into direct and indirect forms:
1. 1. Direct extrusion and puffing, common products such as darling, corn on the cob, etc. When the raw material is stirred by the machine shaft, it is heated by rapid shear friction or steam to provide the high temperature and high pressure required for puffing in a short time, and then extruded and discharged through a die hole of a specific shape, and cut by a cutter into various shapes. desired shape. When extruding and discharging, it will achieve a fluffy effect because the external environment is normal temperature and pressure. Follow-up baking and drying can make the product more fragrant, loose, crisp and crisp.
2. Indirect extrusion and puffing, the common ones are bao kaka, cola nuts, gypsophila, rice cakes (senbei), etc. The extruder provides the functions of stirring, cooking and forming, and the puffing is done by baking, frying or microwave heating. This practice allows puffed food to have a variety of textures and tastes, creating a different eating experience.
Although the puffing effect is important, in order to create a snack that people can't stop eating one after another, all links in the latter part of the process are also very critical. For example, if you spray oil on the surface of the product and then bake it, you can still create a crispy and crispy effect without frying. Therefore, the product is labeled as non-fried, which only means that it does not use the frying process, but it does not necessarily mean less oil. Many people smell the discoloration of oil, but from the perspective of the manufacturing process, oil actually shoulders many important tasks and can help product quality to be better. For example, when making popcorn, an appropriate amount of oil can be used as a heat transfer medium, so that the dry corn can be heated evenly and reduce the phenomenon of single-point scorching; adding oil when mixing and extruding raw materials can prevent the product from being too hard; in indirect extrusion In the process of pressing and puffing, frying can make the product expand and create a thick and crisp taste; while spraying oil in the seasoning stage can make the seasoning powder evenly adhere to the surface; using butter, coconut oil and other oils can also add special features to the product aroma.
Puffed foods are often also added with a lot of salt and sugar, and they have two main functions: to adjust the taste, and to adjust the puffiness and porosity of the finished product. Since puffing depends on the gelatinization reaction between water and starch granules, if a small amount of water-soluble sugar and salt is added to the raw materials, it can affect the density of puffed snacks. In addition to oil, sugar, salt and other raw materials , you must have seen the names of various food additives on the packaging of puffed snacks. Why do you need to add food additives? The most common food additives should be antioxidants, such as tocopherol (also known as vitamin E) to avoid oil oxidation; in addition, adding a small amount of quality improvers can prevent the ingredients from caking and adjusting during mixing and cooking. Food acidity, make oil and water mix evenly, such as silica, gluconolactone, phosphates, calcium carbonate, etc. However, there are many types of food additives with the above functions, and how to use them together is the secret recipe of major manufacturers.
In order to make the taste more crisp, some products will add expansion agents (such as sodium bicarbonate, ammonium bicarbonate), so that the raw materials will generate carbon dioxide or ammonia gas when heated, and the texture of the finished product will be more fluffy and light. Have you ever wondered: Why must these food additives be added? In fact, puffed food requires a large amount of grain agricultural products as raw materials, but each batch of harvested crops may be inconsistent in flavor and quality due to factors such as climate and water quality, so it is necessary to rely on food additives to maintain product quality stability, so as to prevent consumers from clearly buying the same product , the taste is different. All food additives added to food must comply with the scope of use, limits and specifications of food additives. Improve the process and technology to meet the changes in market demand. In recent years, in order to meet the changes in consumer tastes and preferences, puffed food manufacturers are also committed to using new processing technologies and processes, in an attempt to make puffed snacks continue to be popular in the market and not be eliminated by the times.
For example, in order to reduce the oil content, low-temperature vacuum baking is used instead of frying, or degreasing equipment is purchased; some are improved models and processing conditions, so that rice grains can be directly puffed into rice flakes, or the moisture content of raw materials can be adjusted. , pressure, temperature and other conditions before expansion, in order to optimize the expansion effect and reduce the use of expansion agents. Next time you want to eat puffed snacks, don’t forget to check the product information on the package, such as the type of raw materials, the proportion of ingredients (the more you use, the higher the order), and whether there are any allergens that you must not touch. and many more.