RF In-Pack® technology, a revolution in sterilizing tasteful food
Do you spend a lot of time, money and effort into sourcing the best quality, fresh ingredients rich in flavour in order to prepare a delicious product? And then the flavours, textures, fresh colours and nutritional benefits of your products are mostly lost by the excessive heat-load of retort sterilisation. The quality is far poorer compared to the quality of a fresh meal. That makes it easy to understand that longer shelf life food is far less popular. We, consumers, prefer fresh, tasty and yet sustainable food. With the newly developed RF In-Pack technology, this no longer has a problem. Would you like to taste the difference?
What is RF In-Pack technology?
This novel industrial pilot system – the world’s 1st – uses Radio Frequency to sterilise solid pre-packaged food products with only 40% of the heat-load of traditional retorts. The RF In-Pack is suitable for sterilizing your premium quality ‘ready to eat’ meals, resulting in a like fresh bite, taste and flavour and having a prolonged shelf life.
With RF in-pack sterilisation, the food is packaged and placed in the sterilisation equipment. The product is then heated by means of radio frequency waves to a temperature of 121°C within 10 minutes. The alternating electric field generated by the radio waves causes ions to move, thereby generating heat. This results in very fast and uniform heating. The product is then cooled with cooling water.
RF In-Pack offers the following benefits:
- More intense & fresher flavours
- More vibrant colours
- Better ‘bite’
- Enhanced vitamin retention
- Reduced formation of cooking flavours
- Shorter process time
See and taste the difference
When we take a closer look at the sensory evaluation of both products a very favorable series of features appear. In both cases a significant difference has been established in favor of the novel RF In-Pack technology. The following 2 products have been meticulously compared with a) the conventional retort process and b) the novel RF In-Pack technology.
The spider web plot shows the results of the sensory evaluation of Peas in Puree after having been processed using RF In-Pack technology (green) and traditional retorting process (blue).
Another example shows the spider plot of the sensory evaluation of Pesto after having been processed using RF In-Pack technology (green) and traditional retorting process (blue).
*The lower scores correspond with poor quality and in general characteristics of severely heat processed foods. Higher scores correspond with high quality and in general fresh characteristics.
The overall evaluation of both recipes is clearly in favour of RF In-Pack. Whenever you consider giving your precious food product a delicious treat, you might consider TOP bv’s RF In-Pack technology.
Are you looking for ways to improve the like-fresh qualities of your food whilst retaining a long shelf life at ambient temperature? Feel free to contact us at: .
