Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Inhibiting chemical or physical change of food by contact... – Including step of lowering temperature to or below 32...
Patent
1998-06-11
1999-11-30
Paden, Carolyn
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Inhibiting chemical or physical change of food by contact...
Including step of lowering temperature to or below 32...
426 66, 426643, 426326, A22C 2504
Patent
active
059938757
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This application is the National Stage of International Application No. PCT/NO96/00200 filed Aug. 7, 1996.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method for cooling and preservation of fish and for products made from fish treated according to said method. The method comprises cooling of the fish by means of a cooling medium in tanks, containers or other suitable facilities.
The problems with present technology in this field are the quality of the raw material delivered to factories etc. for further processing, both with regard to consistency and degradability due to enzymatic and bacterial activity.
It is generally known to cool down the fish raw material to temperatures of 0.degree. to -5.degree. C. in order to slow down the degrading bacterial activity. The fish might for instance be cooled down in tanks on board the ship by circulating sea water or fresh water. The main problem with using sea water is that the NaCl content of the raw material gets too high, thereby giving too high content of this salt in the fish meal. A further consequence of this is that the price the fisherman gets for the fish might decrease with increasing content of NaCl in the fish delivered.
Cooling of the raw material by means of ice or ice-slurry is also generally known. A special type of ice slurry is called binary ice which is a suspension of ice crystals in an aqueous solution. Cooling of for instance fish on board a trawler by means of binary ice will generally cool the fish much quicker than with chilled sea water only. Binary ice as a secondary refrigerant is further described in a paper by J Paul in the 19th International Congress of Refrigeration 1995. Proceedings, Volume IVb, pages 947-954.
Application of preservative agents is also generally known in the art. Thus it is known to add acetic acid or a mixture of acetic acid and about 15 weight % sulphuric acid. The application of acetic acids does, in spite of giving improved quality of the raw material, have several disadvantages. The acid is corrosive to the equipment and requires expensive high quality steel. Those working with this acid have to protect themselves against etching effects of the acid. Further, in order to attain preservative effect the pH should be about 6, but this might cause problems with this acidic agent, as pH<6 could result in autolyses and give problems with the consistency of the fish raw material.
The above known technology is described in the following reports from "Norwegian Herring Oil and Meal Industry Research Institute" (SSF): capelin" By Mr. Agnar Mjelde whiting" By Mr. Tor Larsen for practical use?" By Mr. Tor Larsen
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The main object of the present invention was to develop a new method for treatment of fish to attain a fish raw material which could be stored for an extended period of time and still have improved quality both with regard to consistency and composition implying being less degraded than that experienced with presently available technology.
Another object was to obtain fish products having improved quality and being low in NaCl content.
These objects can be accomplished by cooling the fish, immediately after being caught, in a cooling medium comprising an aqueous solution of formic acid and/or mono/di or tetra salts of ammonium of alkali and/or earth alkali salts of the acid.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
From previous experience it was known that cooling of the fish, and preferably as rapidly as possible, had a positive effect on retarding the degrading activity of the raw material. The inventors therefore started by looking into the cooling step of the treatment process. Application of sea water had been found to have some disadvantages, and the first problem was to find a new and useful cooling medium. To avoid contamination of the fish by NaCl one looked for other salts which could give a brine having crystallization temperatures being suitable for cooling the fish down to about -5.degree. C. In this connection it was also considered how the pres
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Flesland Ola
Hj.o slashed.rnevik Leif
Johnsen Freddy
Mjelde Agnar
Ringdal Ole
Norsk Hydro ASA
Paden Carolyn
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