Rapid Cooling (SmartChill)
Description
A key area of research for MLA is the application of very fast chilling (VFC) and/or very fast freezing (VFF) technologies to the red meat industry.
Rapid Cooling has not been taken up commercially to date, because of practical difficulties in implementation. Difficulties with this technology include:
- Thermal transfer rates in meat limit cooling rates when using realistic temperature differentials.
- Whilst tenderisation of meat using Rapid Cooling technologies has been demonstrated at laboratory scale, the cooling rates achieved in a commercial environment has not delivered consistent eating quality.
- Processor prejudice towards rapid chilling of hot boned meat and/or carcases has resulted in limited incentive to develop new VFC technologies.
- Until now, there has been limited technology and capability to deliver the proposed processing and eating quality benefits.
However, recent joint MLA and MWNZ research level has raised hopes that the meat quality issues can be addressed, via the identification of a new tenderness window (VFC), in which meat reaches a critical temperature within a critical time frame.
Benefits
The benefits of Rapid Cooling include:
- Reduced chiller/freezer space
- Producing high quality chilled hot-boned beef
- Increased display life for chilled products
- Improved tenderness for short aged products (eg. domestic, frozen and aged-frozen)
- Reduced weight loss (improved yield)
- Reduced microbial growth during processing and chilling*
- Continuous process allowing double shifting or 24hr operation without expansion of chiller space*
*not quantified financially
Availability
A number of technologies are being trialled with several key processors, in order to achieve the desired temperature windows.
More information
The prescribed processing efficiencies and enhanced quality are produced using VFC technologies on either hot-boned meat (beef or sheep) or sheep carcases. The stigma in Australia associated with using warm and/or hot-bone processing for quality markets is well established, and therefore represents a major potential barrier for existing hot-boners or traditional cold-bone processors to investigate this potential new way of processing.
The VFC benefits in improved quality hot boned meat have been replicated a number of times in sheepmeat primal and carcase chilling applications, but are yet to be proven in the next phase of research in beef processing applications.
A known benefit of VFF is that extremely rapid freezing rates produce much smaller ice crystals. This results in far less cell and meat tissue damage resulting in superior product on thawing.
Controlled storage and thawing of VFF meats is an essential component of preserving meat presentation (i.e. less tissue damage) and will rely on special thawing technologies which have not been available until recently.
There are several new Rapid Cooling technologies which can address various aspects of quality chilled and/or frozen product, and the particular technology chosen will depend on the commercial drivers of a particular process.
VFC technologies include:
- Immersion
- Tunnel chilling
- Modified plate chilling
- Blast chilling
Since a commercially viable Rapid Cooling technology would have large industry benefits if a practical solution is found, all potentially viable possibilities for achieving this are being pursued for beef portions and/or primals and for sheep carcases down to a primal level. Note that all technologies are limited by an 8cm linear dimension thermal mass of meat, thereby limiting applications of VFC to whole beef carcases.
MLA's current strategy is to build on previous laboratory work and develop guidelines for the time and temperature parameters which are required and would be practical in a commercially viable process.