Our Technical Process
This is a technology where food products are deep fried under vacuum or near vacuum conditions to reduce the fat content compared to normal deep-frying.
- Vacuum fryer deep fries food inside a closed system under reduced pressure, lowering the boiling point of both oil and water in food.
- It allows dehydration of food at lower temperature in order to retain natural color and flavor of food.
Manufacturing process:
- It is equipped with an LPG, along with an improved burner controlled by a Solenoid valve, that supplies the desired heat to the oil pre-heating tank and frying vessel for optimum heating and energy saving.
- A spinner, which adopts the principle of a centrifuge, is located inside the frying chamber and efficiently removes excess oil content of the product.
- The equipment can be modified to use other fuel source, i.e, biomass through gasification process etc.
Prospects: Vacuum-fried local fruits and vegetables like banana, mango, pineapple, durian, jackfruit, papaya, okra, and carrot. Vacuum frying may also be used for string beans, sweet potato, taro, green pepper, garlic, and onion.
Benefits: Final products are crunchy. They have low fat and moist content. Natural color and flavor of food are retained with very minimal changes.
Vacuum fried technology:
Vacuum frying is similar to conventional frying, but it is carried out under low pressure below 50 Torr (6.65 kPa). In comparison to conventional frying, vacuum frying is considered a much better option since vacuum fried product contains much lesser oil and lower acrylamide content, with similar texture/colour and better organoleptic and nutritional properties, in comparison to conventionally fried food. It is an efficient method to produce fruit and vegetable snacks with the necessary degree of de hydration without excessive darkening or scorching.
Vacuum frying is achievable at lower temperature than conventional frying, therefore vacuum-fried products have better nutritional quality (due to retention of essential phytochemicals and essential nutrition), enhanced colour (due to lesser oxidation) and oil degradation is much lesser than normal frying.
Some steps during vacuum frying and their justification
Blanching: This step is done to prevent enzymatic activity before vacuum frying by either steam blanching and hot water blanching.
Freezing: Contribute to form a porous sponge-like structure and improve the texture of the vacuum-fried food.
Vacuum Frying: Vacuum fried products contains lesser oil content, but this is not only the single health benefit of vacuum fried products. Lower operating temperature during vacuum frying, reduce 94% of acrylamide formation in potato chips. Acrylamide is recognized as a potential carcinogenic compound found in fried snacks.
Packaging: Similar to conventional fried products, the vacuum fried products are also having tendency of rancidity. PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) or Aluminium film laminate (AFL) with nitrogen gas filling may be used for packaging vacuum fried products.
Vacuum frying technology have added advantages over conventional frying. Vacuum frying process is achievable at lower temperature than conventional frying and minimises formation of acrylamide, which is a harmful thermal reaction product. Reduced lipid content of the final product, because of lower oil intake during vacuum frying process and higher rate of moisture evaporation are other advantages of the process, including improvement in sensorial and textural properties of the vacuum fried products.