frozen meal
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frozen meal, any of the complete meals or portions of meals that are precooked, assembled into a package, and frozen for retail sale. They are popular among consumers because they provide a diverse menu and are convenient to prepare. A frozen prepared meal may contain a meat entree, a vegetable, a starch-based food such as pasta, and sauce. Some frozen meals are prepared specifically for vegetarians or for individuals with certain dietary needs. The manufacture of such a product requires careful attention by the food processor.
Preparation of meal components
Meats
Meats are often one of the major components in a frozen meal. Several processing methods are used in preparing meats, such as marinating, cooking, and cutting or slicing.
Marinating
In order to tenderize the meat and develop desirable sensory attributes, a marinade is often helpful. Typical marinades contain salt, vinegar, lemon juice, spices, citric acid, and oil. Tenderization of meats is particularly enhanced by marinades that contain proteolytic enzymes—that is, enzymes that help to break down proteins. Meats are simply soaked in the marinade, or they are injected with marinade using special injection machines.
Cooking
Cooking of meats is necessary to eliminate all pathogens such as bacteria that produce harmful toxins. In a typical cooking process, the temperature at the centre of the meat is raised to 70 °C (160 °F) and held for at least two minutes.
Many meats are fried in immersion fryers. During frying, meats are cooked and desirable flavours created. Furthermore, the hot oil used in frying sears the surface of the meat, minimizing moisture loss during cooking. When meats are coated with breading material, frying is helpful in binding the batter. The oil retained in the breading layer enhances the aroma and texture of the fried foods.
Certain delicate foods, such as fish, are breaded and pre-fried for a short time to bind the breading material. Actual cooking of the fish is done when the consumer reheats the product. On the other hand, fried chicken is completely precooked during the frying process. Frozen fried chicken is reheated mainly to raise the serving temperature.
Commercial fryers are either batch or continuous units. In a continuous fryer, the foodstuff is placed on a feed conveyor that moves the product into a tank filled with frying oil. The oil is heated to 170–180 °C (340–360 °F). Simultaneously, another conveyor moves in the same direction just above the feed conveyor in order to prevent the food material from floating in the tank. The speed of the feed conveyor is carefully controlled so that the product remains immersed in oil for the required time. At the end of the tank, the conveyor moves the fried foodstuff above the oil, the surface oil being drained back into the tank.
Oven cooking is another method used to prepare main entrees in frozen prepared meals. Inside an oven, foods are heated by conduction, convection, or radiation. Certain ovens are designed to introduce steam during the heating cycle. In continuous-type ovens, the food moves on a mesh conveyor through different zones where the food may be subjected to different air velocities and steam flow in order to maintain the humidity at a desired level.
Batch-type ovens are ideally suited to cooking under vacuum. In vacuum cooking, meats are cooked at reduced pressure and temperature. In one vacuum technique, known as sous vide cooking, foods are cooked in their own juices, thus retaining their natural flavours and moisture. Cooking time is usually increased because of the low temperatures employed. The process involves placing the food inside a laminated pouch and subjecting the packaged product to vacuum before sealing. The sealed pouch is then cooked in boiling water. After cooking, the pouches are quickly cooled in a stream of cold water prior to freezing.
Slicing and dicing
Cooked meats are more sensitive to physical handling than raw meats, because upon cooking the meat tissues become loosely connected with one another. Therefore, cooked meats are cooled to low temperatures, resulting in the stiffening of the muscle fibres, thus easing the cutting and slicing operations.
When the meats are in frozen state—that is, at temperatures between -18 and -23 °C (0 and -10 °F)—they are tempered before cutting. Tempering involves warming the frozen meats to temperatures slightly below their freezing point—for example, between -4 and -1 °C (25 and 30 °F). Tempering of frozen foods is often carried out in industrial-scale microwave ovens.
Meats are cut into cubes or dices by a dicing machine. A common industrial-scale dicer uses a knife blade attached to a revolving impeller. With each revolution of the impeller, the blade removes a slice from the large pieces of meat that are fed to the machine. The meat slices are cut into squares using cross-cut knives. The diced product is then discharged from the machine.
Vegetables
The vegetable portion of a prepared meal may be procured directly from a frozen-food processor, or raw vegetables may be frozen on site. Processed vegetables that are intended for inclusion in prepared meals may be frozen if they are to be stored for a long duration, or they may be directly conveyed to the processing area for assembly on meal trays.
Pasta
In preparing pasta, size is an important criterion. Thin pastas such as spaghetti cook rapidly, so their texture is more difficult to control. Thick pastas, on the other hand, can be heated and cooled in a more controlled manner.
Pastas are cooked in rotary blanchers holding large volumes of water. A gentle rotary action in the blancher helps to avoid clumping during cooking. (Vegetable oil may also be added to the cooking water.) At the end of the cooking cycle, surface starch is washed off the pasta, again to avoid clumping. Immersing the cooked pasta in cold water also stops the cooking process.
Sauce
Sauces and gravies impart desirable sensory attributes to meats and vegetables. Furthermore, they help to prevent undesirable changes that result from dehydration of frozen foods during long-term storage. The most common sauces are either tomato- or cream-based. All sauces are accented with spices, thickening agents, emulsifiers, and salt.