food & drink processing 37
bean blanchers, and not all incorporate these The bean is then full hydrated and cooked, ready to
technologies for maintaining bean integrity, but those be consumed and ready to be put directly into flexible
that do are able to provide dry bean blanch quality equal pouches without the need for further hydration or
to or surpassing that of soak tanks. cooking.
It has only taken 30 years for continuous blanching Processing times for the beans are comparable to
technology to catch up with the soak tanks, as far as previous continuous blanching methods. The system has
bean quality is concerned. But during that time the the added benefit, however, of providing an
technology was also able to reduce processing times to a exceptionally low product damage rate of less than
fraction of what the soak tanks can deliver, and along 1 per cent.
the way pick up a hefty 50 per cent of the dry bean “Today we are seeing more customers coming to us
processing market to try out and adapt to its automated wanting their beans fully hydrated and fully cooked in a
systems. This, of course, has been aided by the continuous method,” says Steve Hughes, CEO of Lyco
integration of pre-programmed PLC control systems Manufacturing, the food equipment manufacturing
which provide precise automated control of the process company that developed Pressure-Flow.
functions, including recipe management. The PLCs “They want the process done up front so if it goes
provide uniform heating and cooling achieving a totally into a pouch for soup, or going into some other
consistent end process. application, the bean is then already hydrated and
In comparison to batch (tank) processing, the PLCs cooked, fully cooked in most cases.
used in conjunction with the continuous blanchers “The two factors of bean hydration are time and
deliver a level of consistency in processing that cannot temperature,” Hughes explains. “When we began
be obtained with manual-operated batch systems. researching on a continuous dry bean blanching system
Human intervention is always capable of introducing that could bring beans to a fully-cooked 60 per cent-plus
arbitraries of process time fluctuations, temperature hydration, increased process time was not an option for
changes, bean-to-water ratio differences, inconsistent us, so we began testing different variations with
stirring and deviations in recipe applications. Not all dry increased temperature over 212°F in a pressure vessel
beans take the same amount of time to hydrate. Recipe instead of the normal atmospheric vessel used in
differences can vary from 30 to 60 minutes depending continuous blanching. We built a Pressure-Flow
on the type of bean. continuous simulator so that we could work directly with
Lines that have changed over from batch to the most our client companies to test increases in temperature
technologically-modern continuous systems have seen a while maintaining process times and footprint.
large improvement in quality. The beans are typically “Bean bursting or splitting normally occurs by
uniformly blanched, and properly hydrated, not hydrating a bean too fast or at too high a temperature,”
under- or over- hydrated. The product looks the same, continues Hughes. “This is usually not a problem with
has the same colour and it is the same size after soak tanks, but requires precision processing in
blanching. continuous systems, and even more so when processing
As the flexible packaging trend continues to spread with pressurised vessels, as we are doing here with
throughout the food processing industry, so has the Pressure-Flow.”
demand for a fully-hydrated and cooked bean obtained
through continuous blanching.
Continuous hydration: a better option?
Up till now, both batch and continuous hydration If a company is processing 6000 to 10 000 pounds of dry
methods have been focused on bringing dry beans to 55 beans per hour, or more, then it would well justify a
to 58 per cent hydration, which in essence hydrated the continuous-method system. The processor that is only
beans within 90 per cent of their desired saturation, they handling say 1000 pounds of beans an hour may,
were then put into a can with brine, sealed up and however, be better suited for batch processes.
cooked. In the can the beans picked up the remaining But given the trending increases in the varieties of
10 per cent hydration to reach full intended saturation pulse popularity and consumption, coupled with the
for the consumable product. newly emerging desires by food processors to put fully-
In the desire to provide consumers with a fully- cooked beans into flexible pouches, it just may be that
cooked product using flexible pouches, in the form of continuous hydration-blanching, and Pressure-Flow in
soups and entrees for example, processors have been particular, has positioned itself in a new role as the dry
limited to using batch tanks to hydrate beans to the bean hydrating and blanching process of choice.
needed 60 per cent-plus saturation level where the bean And maybe, for the first time in more then half a
would be considered fully hydrated and cooked. In the century, it has usurped soak tanks as the dominant dry
latest upgrade to continuous dry bean processing, a new bean processing technology. p
development called Pressure-Flow has emerged which
for the first time makes possible the hydrating of dry Jim McMahon writes on emerging technologies in food
beans to a 60 per cent-plus saturation level through a processing. Lyco Manufacturing Inc, Columbus, WI, USA.
continuous blanching process.
www.lycomfg.com
www.scientistlive.com
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