The Effect of Freeze-chilling on the Quality of Ready-meal Components

Freeze-chilling involves freezing and frozen storage followed by thawing and chilled storage. It may have logistic benefits for food processors in that it enables `chilledʹ products to reach more distant markets and facilitates bulk production of these foods. Trials with potential ready-meal components, tested individually, indicated that freeze-chilling reduced the vitamin C content of instant mashed potato and steamed broccoli in comparison with frozen-only or freshly prepared. Freeze-chilling also reduced the softness, adhesiveness and whiteness of instant mashed potato and increased its centrifugal drip. It also resulted in lower shear values in steamed broccoli. Freeze-chilled steamed salmon had higher peroxide values than freshly steamed but these were not reflected in taste panel response; neither were any of the other differences in instant mashed potato or broccoli, i.e. no statistically significant taste panel preferences or sample scores were obtained for the three products under test. Freeze-chilling resulted in raised total viable counts in comparison with the freshly prepared products but these were within acceptable limits. Nevertheless, further tests on the safety aspects of freeze-chilling need to be carried out. Issues such as the labelling of freeze-chilled foods and use-by-dates must also be considered.