2019 MEETING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LLEIDA – Use of starters in the food industry
Hello again and welcome to a new Blog post. For one more year, we have participated in a meeting to share our knowledge with the students of the Master in Innovation and Management in the Food Industry, taught at the University of Lleida. Here is the whole experience!
The conference was impeccable thanks to this centre where we always feel like home whenever they invite us to share our experience and our thoughts about today’s industry.
For many years Luciano and Alejandro, Amerex’s technical experts, dealt with some topics such as the application of starters in the meat industry, but this year the rest of the food industries were presented with a special emphasis.
As we have already mentioned in other occasions, starter or ripening cultures are commonly used for a traditional purpose, which is to actively intervening in the creation of organoleptic properties of the final product during the manufacturing of fermented foods. This is performed through the production of acid and enzymes, as well as ensuring sanitary quality.
Particularly, preservative cultures increase shelf-life and safety of the final product, so they can last longer. Let’s see some examples!
In the meat sector, we can see a comparison between two cooked loins, one of them injected with a common chemical additive while the other has been injected with one of our preservatives. The results of adding a preservative are remarkable and profitable, thanks to their capacity to control factors that negatively affect the final product, both microbiological and organoleptic.
In the case of these two spanish omelettes subjected to high temperature conditions up to 33ºC, we can also see the difference between adding a preservative or not. Both organoleptic (gas generation, texture) and microbiological (analysis of total mesophilic and enterobacteria) results were worse in the spanish omelette without the preservative.
Alternatively, in these salmon pieces, with and without preservative. Above all we can observe the liquid formation and texture. It can be stated then that the addition of a preservative clearly provides an advantage at least in an organoleptic level in this matrix.
What will be next? Our Pilot Plant is already preparing to carry out further trials in other applications. This year, the two top products in terms of preservatives that had not been tested so far are salmon and sauces for vegetable matrixes. Stay tuned, because we will continue reporting!
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