89-10 |
Bulk processing of dry beans as an alternative to canning for refrigerated foods |
R. M. BASEL, Lebensmittel Consulting, 10760 W. Co. Rd. 18, Fostoria, MA 44830 Most salad bean products use commercially canned beans. In many commercial uses of dry bean canned products, cans are emptied to formulate final products. Considerable effort is required to remove the beans and the cans are a disposal issue. It would be better for dry bean processors to offer a bucket or bulk filled aseptic or just-in-time product for such applications. Such a process should have a much lower cost. The process must be capable of high production throughput with a minimum of labor and result in quality equivalent to canned product. The objective was to develop both a model and specific processing recommendations from trials that would allow prospective companies to process bean products in bulk as either an aseptic product or bulk refrigerated product with a reasonable shelf life. In these experiments, the bean products were cooked in various pressurized agitated kettles and the results modeled. Heat transfer, agitation, cook cycle time and quality attributes of the final products were compared to standard canned products used by salad makers. The results show that surface area to volume is the most important criteria to successful scale-up processing. Proper agitation rate and agitator design is the most important engineering consideration to quality as the equipment size increases. A slow, but gentle scrapped heating surface must prevent burn-on while not abrading or macerating the bean. Calculation of the proper heating times and temperatures can be modeled based upon mathematical models used to validate canning sterilization cycles. The results of this work show that large batch and continuous processing of bean products can be achieved and will result in a high quality product that can be produced economically versus current commercial practice in bulk containers. Designs of a few acceptable systems to achieve this goal along with the economics will be shown.
Session 89, Product Development
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