Just Add Meat

  Why is the concept of speed-scratch cooking so appealing to consumers, and why all the choices? "Simplifying one's life has become a national pastime, which means reducing anything that falls into the 'chore' category; cooking in any form has become a low-priority chore," says Buzz Baughard, vice president of the savory business unit at Givaudan Roure Flavors in Cincinnati. Simplicity is a priority to those whose lives are anything but simple. In fact, people are so caught up in their all-consuming lives that at 4:00 p.m., many still don't know what they'll be having for dinner - a behavior that can lead to impulse buying, observes Baughard.

  Meal kits are particularly appealing to shoppers who buy on impulse. Not only do kits provide convenience, but "everything is there for them, so they don't have to think about it at the end of the day. The meal kits are a no-brainer," says Michele Perchonok, manager of new product development at Riviana Foods, Inc. in Houston. Easy preparation is important, because many of today's consumers grew up on convenience-type foods, and lack the skills needed to prepare meals from scratch. "People don't have to think about what herbs to add, or to make sure they have their rice or their grated cheese. All they need to know is 'I have this box and I have the chicken' and the meal is complete," says Perchonok.

  Many concepts for meal starters come from restaurant-style meals. "Restaurants maintain patron interest with familiar center-of-the-plate proteins that feature unique marinades, sauces and spices," notes Jennifer Gusse, director of marketing for Amboy Specialty Foods Company, a division of Dean Foods, Rosemont, IL. This trend readily adapts to the meal-kit market, where the challenge lies in providing consumers with convenient meals in a variety of flavors, at a good value.

  Options range from home-style dinners to ethnic entrees, which have become more broadly accepted by the entire family, notes Baughard. Just look at Pillsbury's Green Giant Create a Meal!™ line, with oven-roasted flavors such as barbecue chicken, lemon-pepper chicken and Parmesan-herb chicken, as well as a selection of stir-fry meals in Szechuan, teriyaki and garlic-and-ginger varieties.

  Birds Eye®, a division of Dean Foods, offers additional ethnic flavors, such as oriental lo mein and sweet-and-sour with pineapple tidbits, in its line of frozen meals called Easy Recipe Creations. Other, more traditional flavors are also available, including basil-herb primavera and tortellini parmigiana.

  Certain dry-mix meal kits, such as Betty Crocker's Hamburger Helper®, Chicken Helper and Tuna Helper, have been available to consumers for years. Flavors include various cheese types and traditional home-style versions such as stroganoff and lasagna. A newcomer to the market, Golden Grains' Rice A Roni® Simmering Suppers™ line features classic restaurant-style flavors such as homestyle chicken with garlic-and-butter rotini, classic steak and gravy with rice pilaf, and honey-glazed chicken with wild rice medley. These dinners contain a shelf-stable sauce in a sealed foil pouch.

  To keep consumers interested in meal kits, manufacturers continue to develop unique flavor combinations and innovative packaging. Form-fill-seal pouches, for example, separate sauces from vegetables and eliminate the need for low-melt sauce wafers, which are often difficult to use and "are susceptible to temperature variations," notes Don Smith, president of NorSun Food Group, West Chester, OH. One option for additional flavor comes in the form of pre-packaged, shelf-stable sauces such as stir-fry and sweet-and-sour types that can be easily included with boxed meal kits.

  The initial challenge for the product developer lies in breaking down a meal concept or an entree into separate components and then assembling these into a kit. "It may be as simple as starting with a traditional dish that represents a classic cuisine and putting it into a processable form," says Donna Immel, senior director of research and development at Griffith Laboratories, Alsip, IL. Don Bernacchi, vice president of creative development at Griffith adds: "To make it more interesting for the consumer, you'll have a sauce pack, a seasoning pack and a vegetable pack. The consumer can then add the various components and vary the amounts of each one depending on their preference." It sounds simple, but there are many issues associated with creating meal kits with restaurant quality or home-cooked appeal.

  Often, processors offer vegetables in dices and pieces, which have a commercialized appearance. Basic Vegetable Products of Walnut Creek, CA, will begin offering natural, or chef-cut, vegetables such as red and green bell peppers and onions as part of their dehydrofrozen line. These cuts have more of a home-style appeal, says José Mora, the company's product marketing manager for new products.

  Meeting the demands of consumers who are looking for larger, chunkier, home-style vegetables, even in the dehydrated category, is a challenge, says Fred Turkovich, product marketing manager for air-dried and freeze-dried vegetables at Basic. "We are working on developing those options." It takes time to commercially develop options to meet the latest consumer trends. "When we come up with a new product on our end, we go with the general assumption that it's going to take about a year for a commercial-product introduction," says Mora.

  Delivering high quality for the best value is another challenge faced by meal-kit ingredient suppliers. Good flavor, color and texture are particularly important to producers of vegetable products. "We control the process from the seed development to the final production," notes Mora. Maintaining control over the entire process enables the processor to maintain product integrity from beginning to end, resulting in better cost control and economies of scale, which in turn passes potential savings down to the consumer.

  Converting fresh ingredients from a recipe to an industrial formula requires both creativity and knowledge of flavors. "A lot of work we have been doing revolves around authenticity, which involves getting authentic notes or flavors from cooking methods," says Baughard. For example, rotisserie and roast flavors are very popular. "Rotisserie is elusive, because nobody really has a standard of identity for it. What we've done is roasted 40 or 50 chickens, using similar but unique rotisserie methods," he says. After a complete descriptive analysis of all parts of the chicken, including the pan drippings and the aromatics, flavorists developed authentic flavors based on unique characteristics derived from the study.

  Striving for authenticity is challenging when dealing with vegetables, which are subject to natural variation. To overcome this, flavor standardization is an option. "We've developed gold-standard profiles on characters of fresh, ripe tomatoes," says Baughard. "Using analytical work, we've determined the key drivers, and developed authentic tomato flavors using high-pressure process reactions. For a meal kit, where you use a tomato powder, we've been able to add a tomato flavor to help enhance the overall authenticity of the tomato delivery."

  Delivering flavor impact in a cost-effective manner and meeting labeling restrictions are factors that all flavor suppliers struggle with. Knowledge of ingredient interactions and how certain products perform during shelf life under potentially adverse conditions enables ingredient suppliers to achieve optimal quality and performance.

  Suppliers are also faced with the task of ensuring food safety without compromising quality. "Each ingredient must be cooked sufficiently to meet all food-safety concerns and still maintain texture that can replicate 'fresh' as close as possible," says Smith. "Over-cooking or long blanch times will only soften the final product and reduce or eliminate the positive response expected from the consumer."

  Safety concerns are a given for processors, but those who deal with natural commodities also face quality defects that are not safety related, and which are often out of their control. For instance, a defect found in potatoes known as "hollow heart," where a brown spot appears in the middle, affects product yield and impacts cost, notes Smith.

  It's important for manufacturers to understand all the processes their ingredients will be subjected to, from assembly of the meal kit to storage and handling and preparation by the consumer. Ingredient selection is often the key to ensuring optimal performance. For pasta, "the best way to prevent breakage is to choose the right shape," says Mark Vermylen, vice president of A. Zerega's Sons, Inc. of Fair Lawn, NJ. "You don't want to choose something that is too fragile, because there are a number of opportunities for the product to be injured." Breakage can occur in various stages in the process, from cooking through to packaging.

  Providing the right ingredient and adapting appropriate cooking instructions involves communication between the ingredient supplier and the manufacturer of the finished meal kit. The traditional dry-mix skillet dinner is "an unusual environment for pasta, because pasta is not cooked in its normal six quarts of boiling water," notes Vermylen. "There's a lot of available water there, but the pasta cooks more slowly. Standard pasta might cook 10 to 12 minutes when it's cooked just in boiling water. In a skillet-dinner application, where it's absorbing water a little more slowly, the 20-minute cook time usually works out well. The only things that wouldn't work would be the most fragile of shapes, real novelty-type shapes, or something that is too thin or too thick. A product that is too thin is not going to hold up in that 20-minute cook time, and a product that is too thick is not really going to be cooked."

  Everything affects quality, from marketing trends and processes to ingredient interactions and factors. Putting all the elements together enables suppliers to meet the challenges presented by meal-kit design.

  Authenticity is becoming more of an issue, especially in ethnic foods. "More mirin and sake are being requested to make more authentic Asian-type sauces," notes David Foster, R&D manager at Kikkoman Marketing and Planning in Elgin, IL. Sake is fermented rice wine, and mirin is a sweeter version.

  Teriyaki-based sauces are also increasingly popular, as are Thai flavors. According to Warren Meyer, president of Waunakee, WI-based Geneva Ingredients, his company's "Thai-izer," with its meaty, milky, coconutty and lemongrass character, functions as a base for Thai food.

  Regardless of the ethnicity of the flavor, consumers are looking for "bold flavors, not just 'hot' or 'spicy,' but distinctive and memorable," says Gusse. "What we hear from our consumers - and our non-consumers - is that they're not necessarily brand loyal, but what they want is variety," adds Perchonok. With a variety of flavors, the consumer can count on something different every night, without fear of tiring of the same old thing.

  Trends are also shifting toward home-style comfort foods. "I foresee the introduction of 'stew starters,' casserole basics and even crockpot concepts," says Smith. All of which blend hearty ingredients such as potatoes, carrots, green beans and onions in a traditional gravy with seasonings; the consumer merely adds beef stew meat or chicken to complete the meal.

  Combining flavoring ingredients with stabilizers, enhancers and carriers creates the sauce component of a meal kit. Choosing the right ingredients requires skill and knowledge of both the application and process, and ingredient integrity is key to delivering a quality product.

  In a dry mix, typical carriers include salt and corn products such as maltodextrins, dextrose, corn-syrup solids and sucrose, although sucrose uses are often limited because of sweetness, notes Bernacchi. Small amounts of liquid and hygroscopic ingredients such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) or dehydrated soy sauce generally blend well when added to granular carriers. At levels up to 2%, vegetable oil acts as a processing aid and improves mix uniformity. As long as the oil is added below this limit, it does not require labeling. Anti-caking agents such as silicon dioxide or calcium silicate help keep particles from clumping. Granulated ingredients can also prevent caking. Soy sauce, for instance, is available in a granulated form.

  Agglomerated ingredients can also be used in many sauces. Agglomeration affects the surface area of particles. Not only does this impact flowability of the mix, but hydration of the reconstituted sauce as well. As Immel explains: "Hydration rate of a dry mix is determined by particle size or treatment of the surface of the particle to either enhance its hydration or reduce its hydration rate, which can be done by process or technology."

  Flow properties of a dry mix are also affected by granulation size. "The coarser the granulation, the better the flow," says Bernacchi. Interestingly enough, granulation size also affects taste perception, due to its effect on flavor release. "Coarser materials will release at one point, and the more finely ground materials release at another point. So you can control that timing based on granulation," explains Immel, who describes a similar phenomenon for the form of spice used in a blend. "If you want immediate release, you would use spice extractives because of the high concentration of aromatics. If you wanted a more timed release or a longer delay, you would go with the straight spice." Other factors such as desired flavor concentration, visual needs and economics help determine whether to use dried spices or liquid extracts.

  For a sauce used in a frozen meal kit, water is typically the carrier, followed closely by soy sauce in Asian-type sauces. Other liquid ingredients contributing to finished Asian sauces include cider and rice vinegars, oyster sauce and sesame oil. Spices such as onion, garlic, ginger, red pepper and flavors characteristic of Asian cuisine round out sauce flavor profiles.

  Cheese-flavored sauces are also prevalent in meal kits. In a dry mix, dehydrated cheese powders, sometimes in combination with garlic powder and other dairy-based flavors containing cream or butter notes, often define these meals. Onion and garlic typically blend well with Cheddar and alfredo-type sauces, while southwestern-type spices complement sauces made with Cheddar or Monterey Jack, says Gusse, who emphasizes sauce texture as well as flavor. "The cheese sauce often functions as the 'binding' ingredient for the pasta, rice, vegetables, etc. Typically, a sauce is thinner in pasta products because pasta will absorb moisture from the sauce. The opposite can happen with vegetables. Water may leach out of the vegetable and into the sauce, requiring a higher-viscosity sauce that can accommodate water without compromising the quality of the finished product."

  Whether or not a sauce comes as a dry mix or in a reconstituted form, it will contain at least one, if not a combination, of stabilizers. Ingredients such as lecithin and mono- and diglycerides act as emulsifiers. Various types of modified food starch and gums act as thickeners, and selecting the correct type or combination helps a sauce withstand the harshest of conditions. Products resistant to both acid and shear exist without compromising freeze/thaw stability. Developers can work with suppliers of starches and gums to find the product that best meets their individual needs.

  Starch has a tendency to mute flavors. To lessen this effect, Bernacchi recommends choosing a starch that delivers a minimal amount of flavor. Increasing the flavor level or using flavor enhancers also helps overcome this tendency, says Immel.

  Flavor enhancers such as monosodium glutamate (MSG), HVP, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, 5-prime nucleotides and autolyzed yeast extract (AYE) highlight and round flavor nuances and contribute to an umami effect. Many packaged-goods manufacturers shy away from MSG or HVP because of perceived consumer rejection, notes Baughard. MSG-replacer flavors that don't contain added glutamates, yet give the mouthfeel character of MSG, provide an alternative source of flavor enhancement.

  For many applications, nucleotides and MSG have a synergistic effect when used in combination at an MSG-to-nucleotides ratio between 95:5 and 92:8. Meyer notes that enhancers such as yeast and HVP are generally incorporated into savory flavors, while nucleotides are used both in manufacturing flavor reactions and to enhance the flavor itself. Of course, "the most important flavor enhancer in savory flavors is salt," he adds.

  Enhancing flavors is one thing, but protecting them from oxidation or fading involves encapsulation techniques as well as protective packaging. In the absence of a proper oxygen barrier, terpenes in spices in a frozen food oxidize, giving the product a "frozen" taste rather than a fresh taste, explains Meyer. He feels that one of the biggest advances in packaging is nitrogen flushing. Limiting exposure to metal ions or adding chelating agents is helpful in combating discoloration and other defects caused by oxidation, notes Immel. For instance, ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), polyphosphates and citric acid are capable of binding with trace metals such as iron and copper, which catalyze oxidation reactions.

  Food must also be protected from rancidity, which is a result of lipid oxidation. Natural antioxidants such as rosemary extract or synthetic antioxidants such as butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) or butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) help prevent fat oxidation. Limiting the use of ingredients that contain polyunsaturated short-chain fatty acids, which are susceptible to cleavage by the enzyme lipase, can help prevent rancidity, because once the fatty acid's carbon chain is broken, the aldehyde and ketone breakdown products cause musty, disagreeable flavors and odors. Eliminating lipase-containing ingredients, such as black pepper, when polyunsaturated fatty acids are present helps prevent this type of reaction, says Bernacchi. An extract of black pepper can be used instead.

  To control flavor volatility, encapsulation is recommended. "One of our most popular encapsulation techniques is called Flavorburst®," says Baughard. "This is a patented method of protein encapsulation where we can get a liquid flavor to go through the capsule, but not come back out. That provides a lot of thermal and oxidative stability, and also provides a very unique release of the flavor.

  "You only release the flavor by shear or mastication. So, you get a very unique flavor sensation based on the chew," continues Baughard. "You get all those fresh top notes and those volatile pieces of the flavor that can escape over time either from thermal processing or in-home preparation. This technology survives very well in pasta, even after 10 or 12 minutes in boiling water, so you get a nice delivery of flavor."

  Certain methods of dry-flavor production provide more stability than others, especially for products, like meal kits, that are subjected to harsh conditions. Plating liquid flavors on salt is one technique; spray-drying is another. "Spray-drying isn't as effective when the aromatic chemicals are water-soluble," says Meyer. "They will stay in the water phase and won't encapsulate, whereas the oil-soluble aromatics will encapsulate. Of course, as soon as you add water, it's not encapsulated anymore."

  Other encapsulation techniques involve absorption of aroma chemicals. For instance, aromatics can be absorbed by porous materials such as silicon dioxide, or by cyclodextrins.

  Volatility is common with flavors, but it can also be an issue with spices. "The finer the granulation, the greater the chance it will lose its volatile flavor components," explains Bernacchi. This occurs because of the increased surface area to mass vs. that of a larger particle. Protecting the volatility of flavors helps achieve balance among meal components - a weakly flavored product could potentially be masked by a heavy starch component such as potatoes, rice or pasta, for example.

  One of the major components in "just add meat" dishes is their starchy element, namely potatoes, pasta or rice.

  Potatoes used in dry mixes are either fully dehydrated or freeze-dried, while a variety of fully cooked and roasted types are used for frozen applications. In the mid to late '80s, NorSun introduced both a red and a gold potato. Initially, the gold didn't fare well, but there has been renewed interest in the Yukon Gold variety, says Smith, who notes that other types, such as Superior and Kennebec, also offer opportunities for experimenting with unique tastes and textures.

  The pasta of choice for a dry-meal starter application is the standard variety found in the grocery store or in a foodservice establishment. "We don't have to add any extra egg white to make it stronger, and that gives the product developer a lot of options for shapes, because things such as wall thickness, or the ability to add an ingredient, do not restrict you. So, you can go from the most mundane elbow macaroni to the most interesting bow tie," says Vermylen. Standard pasta is generally cooked separately, and then individually quick frozen (IQF). When the pasta comes out of the freezer, it's free flowing and can readily be packaged. Breakage can be avoided by using sturdier pasta.

  Pasta destined for frozen applications is generally made from 100% semolina, the highest quality flour. Dry "add meat" applications are less demanding and could therefore use pasta made from lower grades of flour such as durum or hard spring wheat types. The pasta used for both dry and frozen meal-kit applications typically has a moisture of 12%. For a dry mix, moisture would be reduced to a level of 6% if pasta and seasonings were combined in one package, preventing moisture from migrating into the seasoning and causing clumping.

  Rice follows a similar pattern with regard to moisture level. A combination seasoning/rice packet requires a drier grain, usually around 6.5% moisture. Otherwise, moisture levels run between 11.0% and 12.5%. In some frozen meal items, IQF rice is added at the end of the process, because adding it to a saucy environment prior to freezing might give the rice time to absorb moisture. This can cause the sauce to dry out, particularly if the sauced rice isn't frozen quickly, explains Perchonok. Also, since rice is somewhat delicate, minimizing freeze/thaw cycles and large temperature fluctuations keeps the cell structure intact and preserves the integrity of the grain.

  Frozen applications almost exclusively use parboiled rice. Parboiling causes starch gelatinization, which smoothes the grain's surface and gives it a firmer texture. As a result, the product is better able to withstand the harsh processing conditions incurred during cooking and freezing. Under similar conditions, regular milled rice would lose its textural integrity. Parboiling rice produces a cleaner, firmer-looking product that retains separate piece identity.

  In a dry application, rice choice depends on the finished product's parameters. Parboiled, long-grain rice is frequently used for meal applications, although regular milled rice is often associated with Chinese dishes, because it has a softer, stickier texture. "In some cases, you're going to want parboiled product, because the consumer wants a firmer texture or they want something that's going to hold up over a little more time," explains Perchonok. "For example, sometimes in a saucier product, you may want a parboiled rice, because rice - no matter whether it's cooked for its entire time of 20 minutes for a regular cooked rice or not - is going to continue absorbing moisture from the outside environment. Parboiled rice can handle that moisture gain better than a regular milled rice can."

  Vegetables found in meal kits include air-dried, freeze-dried, puff-dried, dehydrofrozen, IQF, granulated, minced and spray-dried, depending, of course, on the application. "Puff-dried is a significantly lower-cost way to produce a vegetable that rehydrates quickly," notes Turkovich. "It rehydrates nearly as quickly as freeze-dried. The technology works best for carrots, and carrots are one of the key vegetables used in side dishes and meals. With freeze-dried, you get instant rehydration, good flavor and decent color, but you lose a lot in terms of texture upon rehydration."

  Air-dried vegetables typically last longer than freeze-dried, explains Turkovich. The porous nature of freeze-dried vegetables makes them susceptible to rapid oxidation. Exposure to light causes color loss, particularly in red products that contain carotenoid pigments, as opposed to green-colored products with chlorophyll pigments. Piece size is also an issue, as smaller particles are more prone to oxidation than larger ones, because of their greater surface area.

  Blanching vegetables also helps control quality. Not only does it reduce oxygen levels in vegetables, but it also inactivates enzymes that adversely affect color.

  Modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) protects sensitive products from oxidation. These packages are flushed with nitrogen, resulting in a very high ratio of nitrogen to oxygen.

  Frozen meal kits often use standard frozen vegetables that are picked, cleaned, cut, blanched and frozen on-site. For manufacturers who do not have vegetable-processing facilities - or who want to develop combinations with non-local produce without fresh- or frozen-shipping hassles - other options exist.

  There's a broad range of dried vegetables available, but the ones most commonly used in meal kits include carrots, celery, broccoli, bell peppers and parsley. The line of vegetables available for refrigerated and frozen applications isn't quite as extensive, but continues to expand with increasing demand for more unique varieties. Basic Vegetable's dehydrofrozen line consists of two types of onion, a high-solids type and a market variety; a vine-ripened tomato and an artificially ripened tomato similar to that found in the market; green and red bell peppers; mild and sweet green chiles; celery; mushrooms; and dial-a-heat® jalapeño peppers. These no-heat jalapeños give customers greater flexibility in customizing and controlling heat levels.

  "Dehydrofrozen is a product that is partially dehydrated and frozen," explains Mora. "It maintains many of the attributes of a fresh product, and at the same time it eliminates many handling and micro issues associated with fresh and IQF products. Dehydrofrozen vegetables have a higher solids content in their finished form than the IQF. In many cases, the range is between 40% and 50% greater solids." As a result of the high solids-to-moisture content, syneresis, or weeping, is minimized. In addition, pieces flow more freely, and resist clumping during frozen storage. Since dehydrofrozen vegetables are only partially dehydrated, they come closer to both the textural integrity and color typically found in fresh ingredients.

  Developing high-solids raw vegetables is critical to both the dehydrated and dehydrofrozen product lines, since higher solids reduce manufacturing costs associated with dehydration, and ultimately translate to greater value to the consumer. "With a high-solids raw material, we can process and supply a finished product with better flavor, texture and color at a more economical price. The way we initially add value is to start off with a vegetable that has less moisture so that we can get more product at the end of the line," says Mora. He estimates that it takes approximately ten years to identify and develop a new vegetable-seed variety.

  Naturally, many consumers combine meal kits with their own interpretation of adding value. For instance, they can experiment by adding different vegetables, meats or soy-based products. If feeling truly creative, they can follow the increasingly popular trend of marinating the meat prior to addition. Meat for fajita-type dishes is often marinated in soy sauce, notes Foster. This not only gives the meat a little more flavor, but it helps tenderize it.

  Adding value to any ingredient, process or finished product is often the key to success. In fact, in the frozen section, "just add meat" concepts have already begun evolving into complete meal kits with cooked meat added.

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