Emulsion in Food Processing 1

Meat ball, sausage and luncheon meat are few of the most processed foods based on concept food emulsion. Emulsion in food processing is a matrix which created by two part of major food content like fat (saturated or unsaturated fatty acid) and water.

Let me explain the part of each particle, when created a fine emulsion in food:

Fat

Every meat contents a significant amount of fat, in beef we called it 85 CL, it’s hypothetically contained 85 part of pure meat, and 15 part of other than meat (simply, I called it fat).

Fat have a major role in food processing, which gave a soft bite and tasty food (emulsion based food emulsion) and had a role in loss prevention.

In modern living, many people fight against fat (which contain saturated fatty acid) that bad for the body. But sadly most of tasty food based on food emulsion used a saturated fatty acid (like pork back fat) in their formula, and most of the food producer substitute their saturated fatty acid (fat) with unsaturated fatty acid (like vegetable oil) to make a food emulsion.

Unsaturated fatty acid doesn’t form a tasty food emulsion just like animal fat, and it doesn’t form a stable and firm form (snap like, food emulsion).

Water

In creating a fine emulsion, water added in 2 forms: ice flake and hot water.

Ice flake used in unsaturated fatty acid fat which keep their fluid form at room temperature, so to keep the emulsion successfully created, we should keep the temperature down to avoid emulsion to break.

Hot water used in high content of saturated fatty acid in animal fat (like beef fat) which harden in room temperature. To rendering hard animal fat, we should transform it first to fluid type fat which can transform with water into an emulsion. If we failed rendered a hard fat, there is no emulsion.

Protein

There is two type of protein generally used in food processing: vegetable protein base (isolated soy protein), or animal based protein (sodium caseinate or non fat dairy milk). Europe style sausages avoid using ISP because its characteristic is not fulfilling the highest taste of Europe style sausage (although animal based protein like caseinate is very expensive).

In Asian market, soya based protein is very economic and profitable. Because of that, many countries with average acceptance of taste, and high volume market, find ISP very promising in food emulsion.

Creating Emulsion

To Be continue.. :D