Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Surface coating of a solid food with a liquid – Including subsequent specified treatment of coating
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-22
2001-08-28
Weier, Anthony J. (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Surface coating of a solid food with a liquid
Including subsequent specified treatment of coating
C426S134000, C426S140000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06280786
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and a process for producing food products of the type generally known as corn dogs. It particularly concerns an apparatus and method that provides a reduction in production time and a corresponding increase in volume.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A corn dog is a wiener impaled upon a stick and coated with batter which is deep-fried to produce a crisp coating.
Initially, corn dogs were made by inserting sticks into wieners manually and clamping a plurality of sticks into a hand-operated clamp. A worker grasped the clamp and dipped the food articles in batter. Thereafter, the batter-coated wieners were immersed in hot grease. Patents relating to this early activity include U.S. Pat. No. 1,706,491 (Jenkins), U.S. Pat. No. 3,648,625 (Glass); and numerous others.
Production techniques became much more sophisticated with the development of machinery. There, the wieners are impaled by sticks driven through clasps and holes in a stick clamp and are then dipped into a batter by elevation of the coating bin. The articles are elevated by rotating or flipping them above the lip of the fry tank and immersed in hot grease within the fry tank, cooked, and then elevated by rotating or flipping them out of the fry tank. Thermostatically controlled heating elements suspended above the floor of the tank heat the grease. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,795 (Walser); U.S. Pat. No. 4,430,930 (Walser) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,842,181 (Walser). Thus, the production process became fully automated and enabled the consistent production of corn dogs not achievable in the manual processes.
While automation provided enormous gains in efficiency and production, the process is still inhibited by a relatively slow production time, primarily because fully cured wieners at a temperature from 28° to 32° Fahrenheit are introduced into a batter having a temperature from 35° to 40° Fahrenheit and are thereafter placed in a fryer to cook until a temperature of approximately 130° Fahrenheit is reached, Thus, the time to raise the temperature of the food product from around 30° to 130° is substantial and places a restriction on the output of the process even though it is carried out by a fully automated machine.
Attempts to expedite the process include raising the temperature of the fryer to accelerate the necessary cooking, however, a rapid increase in heat does sometimes adversely affect the texture of the final food product.
Thus, there is a need for speeding up the cooking process and achieving greater product volumes for a given time, and it is to these needs that the present invention is directed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A part of the present invention includes a machine for preparing and cooking corn dogs, (batter-coated wieners on a stick) having a receiving bin, a loading apparatus, a collecting and aligning system and means for inserting sticks into the wieners to form bars. The bars of stick impaled wieners are moved through a coating bin for the application of batter, and a fry tank containing hot grease receives the coated wieners for cooking. Preliminary heaters are positioned adjacent the loading device and the collecting and aligning apparatus to bring the surface temperature of the wieners up to around 80° Fahrenheit prior to the insertion of sticks and the application of the batter. At this elevated temperature, it takes considerably less time to reach a cooking temperature of 130°, thereby resulting in much faster movement of the bars of batter coated wieners through the fry tank. Moreover, increasing the wiener surface temperature provides a better bond for the batter than would be the case if the entire wiener was heated to
80
° Fahrenheit and minimizes the effect of internal temperature in handling the wieners.
The invention also includes the method for utilizing the apparatus described to achieve faster cooking times and higher production by applying heat at two different locations in the movement of the wieners toward the fry tank to elevate wiener temperature from 28° to 32° to approximately 80° Fahrenheit prior to the wieners receiving sticks, a coating of batter and being introduced to the fry tank.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that a primary objective of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for preparing deep-fried, coated food articles that has all of the advantages of prior art devices and methods and more and none of the disadvantages.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and process for accelerating the cooking times of corn dogs to achieve a significant increase in production.
A further objective of the present invention is to provide an apparatus that is simple in design and construction, easy to maintain, and economical to operate.
Thus, there has been outlined the more important features of the invention in order that the detailed description that follows may be better understood and in order that the present contribution to the art may be better appreciated. There are, of course, additional features of the invention that will be described hereinafter and which will form the subject matter of the claims appended hereto. In this respect, before explaining at least one embodiment of the invention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in its application to the arrangement of the components set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The invention is capable of other embodiments and of being practiced and carried out in various ways. It is also to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein are for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting in any respect. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the concept upon which this disclosure is based may readily be utilized as a basis for designing other structures, methods and systems for carrying out the several purposes of this development.
It is important that the claims be regarded as including such equivalent processes and products resulting therefrom that do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present invention. The Application is neither intended to define the invention or the Application, which is measured by its claims, nor to limit its scope in any way. Thus, the objectives of the invention set forth above, along with the various features of novelty which characterize the invention, are noted with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, its operating advantages and the specific results obtained by its use, reference should be made to the following detailed specification taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein like characters of reference designate like parts throughout the several views.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4379795 (1983-04-01), Walser
patent: 4749579 (1988-06-01), Haydock et al.
Anthony James R.
Goodell Ricky L.
Williams Ronald S.
Kilpatrick & Stockton LLP
Lackey, Esq. Charles Y.
Sara Lee Corporation
Weier Anthony J.
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