Optimizing the quality of frozen foods with REV technology
Dehydrofreezing, through the use of REV technology, is an innovative technique that removes specific levels of moisture homogeneously from fresh organic materials prior to freezing.
The frozen food industry has long been stagnant in the adoption of new technologies, as the challenge of improving the quality of those products in a sustainable and profitable way has been difficult. An area of product development currently gaining traction involves dehydrofrozen applications, which are produced when a portion of the water is removed from the fresh product prior to freezing.
The present day industry standard for frozen food is known as individually-quick frozen (IQF), which prevents large ice crystals from forming at the cellular level because food pieces are frozen to prevent them from sticking and forming a frozen block. IQF is occasionally supplemented with a front-end hot air drying step for moisture removal, which compromises the physical structure of the food and causes excessive nutrient loss due to excessive heat.