Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Processes – Heat treatment of food material by contact with glyceridic...
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-24
2003-06-03
Tran, Lien (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Processes
Heat treatment of food material by contact with glyceridic...
C426S439000, C426S549000, C426S560000, C426S808000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06572910
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to snack chips, particularly uniformly-shaped tortilla-type chips, having raised surface features.
BACKGROUND
Tortilla chips are particularly popular consumer snack products. Tortilla chips are traditionally made from whole kernel corn that has been cooked in a hot lime solution for about 5 to about 50 minutes, then steeped overnight. The cooking-steeping process softens the outer hull and partially gelatinizes the starch in the endosperm of the corn. This cooked-steeped corn, called “nixtarnal,” is then washed to remove the outer hull and ground to form a plastic dough, known as “masa,” that contains about 50% moisture. The freshly-ground masa is sheeted, cut into snack pieces, and baked for about 15 to about 30 seconds at a temperature of from about 575° F. to about 600° F. (302° C. to 316° C.) to reduce the moisture content to from about 20% to about 35%. The baked snack pieces are then fried in hot oil to form tortilla chips having a moisture content of less than about 3%. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 905,559 to Anderson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,690,895 to Amadon et al., and “Corn: Chemistry and Technology,” American Association of Cereal Chemists, Stanley A. Watson, et. al., Ed., pp. 410-420 (1987).
Tortilla chips can also be made from dried masa flour. In typical processes for making such dried masa flour, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,366 to Garza, U.S. Pat. No. 2,704,257 to Diez De Sollano et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 3,369,908 to Gonzales et al., the lime-treated corn is ground and dehydrated to a stable form. The dried masa flour can be later rehydrated with water to form a masa dough that is then used to produce tortilla chips in the traditional manner.
The finished, fried tortilla chips are characterized by randomly dispersed, raised surface features such as bubbles and blisters. The tortilla chips have a crispy, crunchy texture and a distinctive flavor characteristic of lime-treated corn products. The individual dough pieces assume random formations during frying, thus producing chips of non-uniform shape and curvature.
The finished tortilla chips are generally packaged by placing them into a bag or a large-volume canister in a randomly packed manner. Such random packing leads to a packaged product with low bulk-density. Packages with low bulk-density are essentially packages wherein the volume capacity of the package is much greater than the absolute volume of the snacks contained inside. In other words, the package contains a much lower net weight of snack pieces than could be held by the volume capacity of the package.
These large volume packages permit the randomly packed chips to settle along the bottom of the bag or can, creating a large outage in the package (i.e., the total volume of the package minus absolute volume of the product held within the package). This outage not only permits the presence of a significant amount of oxygen and moisture inside the package, thus increasing the opportunity for the chips to become rancid and stale, but also creates a lower value perception for the consumer. Furthermore, this type of package provides little protection from handling and shipping loads imposed upon the fragile chips, and thus it is quite common for consumers to find a considerable number of broken chips within the bag.
Tortilla chips and chip dips, or “salsas,” are a very popular snack combination. However, because of the randomly shaped nature of the chips, consuming tortilla chips that have been dipped in salsa can create a very messy eating experience for consumers. Because of the randomly shaped nature of the chips, the chips do not adequately hold or contain the dip after it has been put on the chip; this is especially true for the fluid portion of the dip. Because most tortilla chips do not have a defined dip containment region or “well” capable of holding fluid dips on the chip, the dip or a portion thereof can readily flow off the surface of the chip, often landing undesirably on clothing or household furnishings.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a uniformly shaped tortilla chip with a defined containment area for dip. It would also be desirable to provide such a tortilla chip which is capable of being stacked one upon the other to form a high-density grouped array and packaged into high-density containers, such as canisters, to reduce breakage. It would also be desirable to provide such a chip that can be produced using a simplified, one-step cooking process rather than the combined baking and frying steps employed in traditional tortilla chip manufacture.
Many problems are encountered when trying to make such a tortilla chip. The stacking of uniformly-shaped tortilla chips upon each other, such as in a nested arrangement, can lead to the abrasion and ultimate breakage of the surface features (i.e. bubbles and blisters) which are characteristic of tortilla chips. This breakage leads to an undesirable surface appearance and to the loss of the chip's crunchy texture.
To date, there has been an absence from the market of nested tortilla style chips. Tortilla style chips can be characterized by a plethora of bubble like surface features breaking through the base plain of the chips. The bubbles are a necessary part of the tortilla chip, providing a dichotomous texture experience with varying levels of crispness with each bite. The presence of bubbles in a chip made with corn is a key visual signal to the consumer of this desirable texture benefit. Corn chip products without surface bubble structures tend to have a dense or glassy texture that is less preferred by some consumers versus the light, crispy tortilla chip texture as evidenced by the more rapid growth of the tortilla chip market segment.
A potential reason for the absence of nested tortilla style chips is the inherent tradeoff that can exist between placing the fragile bubble surface features within intimate contact of adjacent chips. With nested arrangements, there is even a higher probability of direct contact between the lower surface of one chip and the upper surface of an adjacent chip. The direct contact can lead to abrasion and breakage of the surface bubbles leading to a negative visual appearance and loss of texture dichotomy. Additionally, the formulations and methods for making nested chips can directly impact the formation and strength of surface bubbles. There are several problems that make it difficult to deliver a high quality, nested tortilla style chip meeting the end consumer's expectations for this product category.
The moisture loss history of the dough piece during frying typically follows traditional drying theory, wherein there is an initial constant rate period of rapid moisture release that is not limited by diffusion through the dough. The vast majority of moisture loss occurs very early within frying when the dough first contacts the hot oil. The quality of the final product texture is highly dependent upon the early moisture loss history. The final product can assume a variety of three dimensional shapes due to the convective forces of the oil contacting the product surface during cooking.
Surface bubbles form due to a balance of simultaneous forces that include a rapid evolution of steam volume coupled with limited interstitial channels to transport the steam and localized gelatinization of the dough piece surface. A rapid evolution of steam from the constant rate period of moisture loss during frying momentarily overwhelms the diffusion capacity of the dough causing the steam to remain briefly trapped. When the steam comes in contact with a gelatinized dough region of sufficient tensile strength, a surface bubble is formed. The bubble formation is stopped when the steam eventually escapes through another surface location.
The first requirement for nested tortilla chips is that each chip should be substantially uniform in size and shape so that the chips can be fit one within another with minimal spacing between the chips. Making snack pieces of uniform size and shape can be accomplis
Fiteny Mark Joseph
Groves Russell William
Herring John Russell
Hsieh Yen-Ping Chin
Jones Charles Edward
Jones Melody A.
The Procter & Gamble Co.
Tran Lien
LandOfFree
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