Food processing would not have been a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide (and growing) if its products did not serve largely real consumer needs. Obviously, all food processing is not essential and some of it is actually undesirable. A lot of it has nevertheless become a part of our lives.

The entrenched role of processed foods in our lives: We cook at home using nature’s gifts like fruits, vegetables, green spices, milk, water, lentils or pulses (daals), legumes and beans (kathols), cereals and their flours, etc. with the help of bought-out processed food ingredients like cooking oils, sugar, salt, dry spices and their powders etc.

Our daily cooked food is supplemented by bought-out processed foods like bread, butter, cheeses, jams, jellies, ketchup, soy sauce, preserved foods, sweets, honey, etc. Though optional, they have made deep inroads into our life alluding to their utility. That many of them contain artificial preservatives, ‘hidden’ sugar and salt, harmful constituents and lack substantive nutritive value is a dampener but, in an ideal market, the consumer is free to choose.  But undoubtedly, processed foods make our modern life easier and offer us the option of making it even better.

Innovative home uses of some processed foods: Processing of natural foods into packaged products has some rationale. For example, a bread loaf is the result of a desire to deliver a popular staple – wheat – in a largely breakfast-friendly form. But its soft and springy fluffiness has taken it into dozens of dishes cooked at home. Some popular examples are: tray-bakes, croutons, ‘shahi tukda’,  thickened shakes, puddings, halwas, pao bhaji, misal pao, patties and cutlets etc. Over time, such ‘cooking hacks’ have become common and are generally taken for granted. But food science, innate culinary sense, passion for innovation and love for food can be combined to use many common processed foods in ways that may not be obvious. Here are some  examples:

1. Milk powder:The most easily available and economical forms are the Skimmed Milk Powder (SMP) and Dairy Whitener powder. They are the almost completely dried forms of milk in which water is evaporated efficiently and quickly on industrial scale at lower temperatures and at lower cost such that its constituents are not damaged much and the reconstitution into milk is good.

Now, we prepare many milk-based sweet dishes that require evaporation of a large part of milk’s water content directly to atmosphere for ‘concentration’. Rabdi, basundi, doodh pak, kulfi and ice cream mixes,  khoya or mawa, pedhe, barfi, kaju katli, gulab jamuns, etc. are the main examples – some liquidish and some almost solid. (Note that kheers, porridges, phirni’s, puddings and, to some extent doodh pak use milk as a cooking medium also apart from some water evaporation.) Practitioners of this skill know how demanding it is at home and can use milk powder smartly.

Take rabdi. Let half the milk reduce by about 50% above a flame and while that is happening, prepare a dispersion of milk powder in the other half at room temperature and simply pour it into boiling milk. (This dispersion is best prepared by preparing a thick paste of the powder with a small volume of milk and then diluting it by gradually adding the rest of the milk with stirring. A more meticulous way is to prepare thick paste with powder and small volume of milk, strain it thru the tea strainer and pass the rest of the milk thru the same strainer with constant finger-rubbing of the strainer bottom.) At this stage, add the sugar; it will hasten the browning but slow down water evaporation. Continue for a few minutes and you are done. Note that slow browning will continue even during natural cooling. In case of solid dishes, any smart combination of fresh milk, condensed milk, milk powder is good enough. Remember the ‘Gulab jamun’ pre-mix’? It is simply milk powder with some refined flour or corn starch (sometimes with some suji or semolina) for binding and baking soda/baking powder. If you like grainy dishes, ground paneer or cottage cheese, sieved to get small granules works well. The other option is to add a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar just before switching off the flame on boiling milk. We look at this use of milk powder in great detail later.

2. Condensed milk: It is milk half way to becoming powder but prepared efficiently; it is the smart equivalent of our home-made rabdi. Everything written above applies to it. In India, only sweetened version is available; in the US unsweetened condensed milk is common and is also used for whitening tea and coffee.

 

3. Stevia extract: Available pure as well as in combination with low calorie natural or semi-natural sweeteners, it sweetens tea, coffee and other dishes with negligible calorie input. It obviously allows graded ‘calorie consciousness’ by seamlessly combining with our usual table sugar.

 

4. Tomato ketchup: It can partly or fully substitute fresh tomatoes in vegetable (subji) dishes and acidulate the lentil or pulse and legume and bean dishes.

5. Bread: Easily converted to croutons and worked into koftas, patties, milk shakes, tray bakes, halwa, puddings…..

6. Miscellaneous: Actually, this list can be endless. (i) Raw mango chutney (Chhundo in Gujarati) can tang up any sauce. (Acknowledgement: We have seen Jamie Oliver do this effortlessly on his popular ‘quick cooking’ TV programme. He once prepared a gorgeous chutney by combining it with pomegranate seeds.) (ii) Tomato puree’ (or even ketchup) can pep up a gravy. (iii) Powdered oats can bind up last traces of water in a dish that is undergoing water evaporation with heat. It is also a great thickener for soups and makes a healthy substitute for custard powder. (iv) Protein isolates and hydrolysates can proteinize a post-exercise drink like lassi, milk or mattha. (v) Butter can enrich any dish prepared with refined oil. (vi) A single versatile garam masala can spice up bao bhaji, samosa, Punjabi subji’s and daals, chhole and so on. An entire blog post is planned on this. (vii) Immunity-boosting kahwa masala goes well with water, milk, tea, coffee, chocolate drink, protein drink etc. and can spice up all winter tonic sweets. (viii) Honey thickened with kahwa masala, partially evaporated fruit crushes and Chyavanprash are excellent jam substitutes. And so on.

Note that processed bought-outs are being pressed into convenient alternative uses here. Paratha made with leftover daal is a different type of a case which needs separate elaboration.

Some elegantly processed foods improving our life: Most of food processing is about cooking with water/steam, drying or removal of water using heating and air (air drying), grinding, blending or mixing, heating in special planned ways, cooling or refrigerating etc. or combinations of these. Here are some unusual and elegant processed food categories techniques making our lives safer and delightful.

(1.) Freeze dried or lyophilized products: Drying or dehydration of foods and ingredients reduces the water activity in them by reducing their water. Since water is the main culprit in promoting microbially mediated (sometimes also chemical) spoilage of foods, this improves the keeping quality substantially. Conventional drying relies on heating the food in presence of an air current that maintains low partial pressure of water vapour in the air receiving water vapour released from the drying food. This additionally improves the microbiological quality further improving the keeping quality. But some irreversible changes make reconstitution (or rehydration) unsatisfactory.

Freeze drying ensures that the food has moisture in the form of ice at a sub-zero temperature under high vacuum which directly vaporizes (or ‘sublimates’) leaving behind a dry product. This ensures excellent rehydration; this author could not distinguish between fresh bhaji (of the pao bhaji duo) and bhaji rehydrated from freeze dried variety at an exhibition. Of course, this was meant to be a demonstration; in reality the process is best applied for high value-addition products like enzymes, live bacterial cultures (typically pro-biotics), hormones, unstable valuable nutrients etc. Thus such products can be life-saving, healthy and delightful. Since the product is easily water-dispersible or ‘solvent-loving’, the process is also called ‘lyophilization’, lyo – solvent and philization – to render loving.

(2.) Extruded products: When some hot, plastic food materials are forced to pass thru an aperture or orifice under pressure and emerge into atmosphere, they puff up because of expansion caused by escaping steam and become light and porous. Such ‘collets’ are easy to extract because of the solvent permeating it deeply. Home-made ‘sev’ or ‘bhujia’ are extruded from a hand-pressurized cylinder. This process is simple and inexpensive and the only options in these cases. Popular puffed cereals (kurmure from rice are the commonest example) are prepared similarly but without extrusion.

(3.) Instantized spray dried products: Milk, fruit juices and coffee extract are typically concentrated to a low moisture content in Multiple Effect Evaporators (MEE’s) and then spray dried by ‘atomising’ the heated food-water mixture down a tall tower where it meets a current of drying air. During this drying, it is possible to ‘instantantize’ the drying particles by agglomerating them with live steam and then finish-drying these agglomerates. This ensures that rehydration is quick, easy and complete making the powder ‘instant’. The maddening delight of instant coffee and the convenience of whitening tea or coffee by direct addition of a powder are possible because of this.

(4.) Retort thermal processed products: When specially selected sealed containers (usually pouches) containing the product are heated to temperatures above 100 deg C under pressure the, product and the package both get simultaneously sterilized. Since the package is already sealed at this stage, there is no scope for ‘post-processing’ contamination and the product has excellent shelf life suitable for long transportation journeys. IV fluids and ready-to-eat subji dishes are examples of such products – the latter eminently suitable long export journeys.

(5.) Protein isolates and hydrolysates: Soybean and peas are typical examples of primary foods from which proteins in concentrated form have been isolated. Such protein isolates need to become mainstream so that young people and sportsmen with higher daily protein requirements can easily fortify their daily dishes with extra protein. Such isolates are sometimes hydrolysed with selected enzymes which break the protein down into smaller peptide fragments which are essentially pre-digested proteins. Such products help the weak and the convalescing to take in protein without excessively loading the digestive system.

(6.) Textured Vegetable Proteins (TVP’s): Pure proteins can be precipitated from their solutions into strands which can be twisted before drying leading to TVP’s. A bundle of such strands along with some additives can be strikingly similar to meat in mouth-feel and appearance. Often called a type of ‘vegetable meat’, these have been successfully used to make tikkies and patties for burgers (‘Whopper’) etc. Such products are not only kind to animals but also eco-friendly. And represent food science at its most elegant.

(7.) Microencapsulation: When water-soluble or dispersible solid, dissolved in water, coats liquid droplets or solid particles and is quickly dried, microencapsulated solid or liquid is formed. It helps protect the enclosed material from damage by whatever surrounds it. When such encapsulated product is a part of a particulate product, it is released only when the particles are mixed with water. An enzyme can be so mixed with a flour at the last minute in a baking pre-mix. Micro-encapsulated constituents often form a part of pharma formulations.

So processed foods are here to stay – a fact that calls for a look at the dark side of processing.

(Visit ‘disclaimer’.)

Next post: Industrial processed foods: Part III

The dark side of processing – a case for cautious consumption