Continuous in line cooking of meat products

This project proposes to develop the use of Ohmic (OH) and radio frequency (RF) heating for the continuous production of cooked ham, chicken and turkey meat to be either subsequently sliced to make sandwich filling or packed as joints/logs. These cooking methods are both direct volumetric heating technologies which deliver energy very efficiently. OH efficiently pre-congeals and sets the meat while RF delivers the final heating step as energy efficiently as possible.
The new production process will offer significant advantages which will be piloted in a factory in the project:
-Continuous processing, with meat product cooked in-line/ in-pipe. Significant production and labour savings.
-Significantly faster cooking with lower energy use with equivalent microbial inactivation. Energy cost savings.
-Very rapid thermally controllable, rapid start up and high production flexibility, good suitability for factory use.
Combining the two emerging technologies will enable them to complement each other overcoming some limitations with each and will realise a very efficient and marketable new process.