Food Preservation Techniques

I'm Ukeme Silas, fondly called Yhukay Silas.
I joined the community because of my love for good Food.

I'm currently studying Food Engineering at University of Uyo, Nigeria.

It's my pleasure to share some Food Preservation Techniques.

Food Preservation is divided into two sections: ★ Processes that requires addition or removal of heat.
★ Processes that doesn't require addition or removal of heat.

Processes that requires addition of heat includes;

1. Pasteurization and Blanching: Named after Louis Pasteur is a relatively mild heat treatment, in which liquids, semi-liquids, or liquids with particulates are heated at a specific temperature (usually below 100°C) for a stated duration to destroy the most resistant vegetative pathogens present in the food.

2. Thermal sterilization:
   Involves heating the food to a sufficiently high temperature (>100°C) to deactivate bacterial spores.

3. Aseptic processing:
   Here the food is rapidly heated under pressure (>130°C) to produce shelf stable products.

4. Sous-vide cooking:
   This involves vacuum packaging food before application of low temperature (65-95°C) heating and storing under refrigerated conditions(0-3°C).

5. Microwave heating:
   In microwave heating, rapid volumetric heating could reduce the time required to achieve the desired temperature, thus reducing the cumulative thermal treatment time.

6. Ohmic heating:
   Involves electrical resistance heating of the pumpable food to rapidly heat the food material.

7. Drying:
   One of the oldest method of preserving food. The spoilage microorganisms are unable to grow and multiply in drier environments for lack of free water.

8. Refrigeration and freezing:
   This removes sensible heat energy from the product using mechanical refrigeration or cryogenic systems; which lowers the product's temperature.

With either of this methods, you can be sure of Shelf stable products.