5 replies to this topic

[Procu1234]

Hi all,

New here so hope this is in the right place!

 

I manage a small production facility where we make small batches of frozen ready meals. I have a product development/process background but am also responsible for technical (small company = minimal staff, of course!). I'd be super grateful if those with more knowledge than me might be able to give me a few pointers regarding our current production/packing process as I've read so many conflicting recommendations out there.

 

- Our site is made up of two 'sections' (separated by an internal wall): food production area, and storage area. Therefore *all* food production related activities (from raw through to portioning/sealing) happens in the food production area (albeit in separate 'zones' to keep raw/cooked segregated, and at different times). It is all in one big room though (so portioning cannot be done in a specific cold room.)

- Our products are frozen ready meals. They are portioned by hand (using scoops and clean hands of course!) into individual film-sealed food-grade trays.

- Everything is cooked using bratt pans/combi ovens etc (ie. 'traditional' cooking methods, not enclosed chambers or anything high-tech/automated).

 

At the moment, we cook the meal in ~50kg batches (say it's a Veggie Pasta for example) and carry out temperature validation (70C/2 mins), then divide the contents of the bratt pans into gastros. The gastros are then taken to the portioning area where the team have 90 minutes to get the food into the ready-meal trays, into the blast chillers and down to 3C. Once they hit 3C, the portioned meals are removed in small quantities, quickly film-sealed/sleeved/boxed and moved to the deep freezers, where they have 240 minutes to reach -18C.

 

The issue with this process is that we are now cooking at higher volumes, and don't have enough people or blast chillers to pot the entire volume of food and get it down to 3C within the 90 minute window. Would we be OK to instead take the contents of the bratt pans, divide it into gastros, put the gastros in the blast chillers to cool to 3C within 90 minutes and then remove the gastros one at a time from the chillers (once they are at 3C) and quickly portion/seal/sleeve/box/freeze the already cooled mixture?

 

My concern with the latter method is that the food would be going from 70C down to 3C, then being removed from the chillers and portioned at room temperature (~30 minutes), before going into the freezers, which feels risky to me.

 

Sorry if that's a bit babbly, but basically my question is what would be the best portioning/cooling process to follow:

1. hot -> portion -> chill portioned trays to 3C -> seal -> freeze

2. hot -> divide into gastros -> chill gastros to 3C -> portion chilled food -> seal -> freeze

 

Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated!

[GMO]

The benefits of your current process are you're effectively hot filling.  That means that you're less likely to have an issue with, for example, listeria in your finished meals because by the time they're cold enough for growth, they've long been sealed.  It's not 100% fool proof, especially if it's not measured or validated but I would have concerns about your open process with no high care / high risk segregation and I think the risk is higher if you cool first.  But I'd recommend as you grow you do look at proper segregation either way.

[Procu1234]

The benefits of your current process are you're effectively hot filling.  That means that you're less likely to have an issue with, for example, listeria in your finished meals because by the time they're cold enough for growth, they've long been sealed.  It's not 100% fool proof, especially if it's not measured or validated but I would have concerns about your open process with no high care / high risk segregation and I think the risk is higher if you cool first.  But I'd recommend as you grow you do look at proper segregation either way.

 

Thank you for this!

 

I agree I do worry about the production and portioning being done in the same room, but it is done in separate areas as far away from each other as we can, but I accept it's not ideal. Unfortunately we are limited by the physical space we're in.

 

Regarding the hot filling, am I correct that as long as the food reaches 3C in 90 minutes it's OK if the finished hot food waits to be portioned outside of the chillers? Or should any food that isn't actively being portioned be put into the chillers to begin the cooling process as soon as it comes out the bratt pans, and then taken out when the team are ready to portion?

 

For example from one production batch we'll get 50kg of cooked product; this gets divided into say 10 gastros ready for portioning. The team start portioning straight away, but will do 3 gastros at a time. While they are portioning from the first 3 gastros of hot mix, should the other gastros be put into the chillers (even if it means them coming back out the chillers, back into a warmer environment, to portion) or can they stay out (covered ofc) until the team get round to portioning them?

 

I understand that all the hot finished food needs to go from the bratt pan (70C) to 3C within 90 minutes, just not sure whether it's more or less risky to begin cooling it before it gets portioned, or leave it out. Is taking something in and out of the chillers better or worse? (If that makes sense!)

 

Thanks so much for your help, really appreciate it.

[GMO]

I am not 100% sure that I understand the question but I'll set out how I'd design it if I could.

 

If you're going to cool down ingredients before sealing in your ready meal tray, then you will have a Listeria risk.  That risk is going to be higher the more handling you do etc but it will never be zero (whatever you do).

 

So to help that risk, most ready meal manufacturers will produce in high care manufacturing areas to reduce the levels of Listeria contamination in the environment.  If you have raw ingredients and cooked ingredients in the same environment, that will be higher risk.

 

You can reduce that risk a bit by hot filling.  So you could cook in an environment well above what is required for a Listeria kill step then put all the hot ingredients into your pack before they drop below a temperature, probably around 70oC but it would be advisable to have a look at a literature reference.  Then seal it while hot, then cool.  

 

Personally I would be very wary of having a situation where you don't have a high care or high risk area (where all of the materials are "cooked in" to that area) AND cooling your components before assembly.  What I'm thinking will then happen is that you're likely to have Listeria presence which will then grow in your finished product post sealing.

 

Even then, I'd be keen for you to have segregation.  It's worrying me the rise of dark kitchens across the world being used for things apart from hot ready to eat for this reason.  I'm starting to hear murmurs of people assembling ready meals in what is essentially like a restaurant kitchen.  There is a reason why the UK put loads of barrier control into ready to reheat foods in the 90s onwards.  You cannot rely on a consumer reheat being an effective kill step.

Do you swab your environment for Listeria?  What are your results like?  How many swabs do you take?

[GMO]

Also what are you looking at for product life and do you do any end of life Listeria testing?

[Procu1234]

I agree completely with what you're saying; it's a constant battle with the company to accept that we are not really in the best facilities for this sort of product, but I am the only person doing anything product/food/technical related so it's an uphill struggle. So my approach for now is to ensure we are doing the best we can with the space we have, and being vigilant on temperature validations and lab testing.

 

We do weekly swabs in the site and every batch produced is sent for full micro testing. We've never had a listeria presence (and have never had any out of line micro results in fact, on either product or environmental tests). 

 

The meals are frozen so have a 6 month BBE from point of production.

 

It is a worry that we don't have the segregated production and portioning areas. I know in an ideal world we would have a separate room for all production from raw to cooked, then it would be moved to a separate assembly room for portioning, but we just don't have the space for this unfortunately.

 

It's interesting you mention the hot filling and sealing being done with the food still at 70C - when we first started out, we briefly used a small third party manufacturer who specialised in ready meals and who were SALSA accredited. Their process was cook (food above 70C) -> portion -> trays into blast chiller (so trays to reach 3C within 90 minutes of cooking ending) -> trays removed from blast chiller, sealed, sleeved and moved to freezers (where they had 240 mins to freeze to -18C). We essentially copied their approach, as they are a far bigger producer and were supplying some NHS sites at the time. However they definitely weren't getting all the finished cooked food into the containers while still at 70C as it was all being done by hand (I spent a day on the floor working with them). The hot food was basically moved from the cookers into big buckets, and a bunch of workers would portion it from the buckets into trays before moving the trays to the blast chillers - the only control being that all the food had to be at 3C within the 90 minute window. They were cooking and portioning in one room, but granted it was much bigger and had more space between zones for raw and RTE handling which is where they were controlling the listeria risk.

 

It is worth noting we are a very small company, selling mainly into independents and D2C, but I totally recognise we still have a risk in our setup so it's definitely something I'll be lobbying management for more resource / budget on!