How to Preserve Sesame Sauce Without Burning During Pasteurization (pH 4.5)
Looking for advice and hoping I've come to the right forum!
I have a sesame sauce I'm trying to bottle and sell commercially. It does not hold up well to standard pasteruization. Heating it up to high heat in a pot on the stove results in a burnt taste and a change of color/texture. What are my options? Ph is 4.5.
Is there an alternative to preserving this sauce that will maintain it's integrity? Ideally, I would like to keep it free of preservatives but will include them if needed!
Any advice is so appreciate! 🙏
i have a client that bottles soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisen, etc - they use HPP, works great.
Tahini / sesame is notorious for Salmonella. Whatever you do, do something to make sure your sesame is properly heat treated.
Because it's high fat, it would be in the same category of risk as peanut butter and chocolate in that low infective doses could cause illness (as in REALLY low, if you detect it, it's an issue.)
Here are some references which might be of interest:
Single Point Lesson: Salmonella Contamination
Inactivation of Salmonella spp. in tahini using plant essential oil extracts - ScienceDirect - includes some suggested herb and spice extracts which might help.
Salmonellosis outbreak linked to imported sesame-based products | EFSA
Whatever you do it will need some effective validation for your product. I wouldn't be relying on temperature / time combinations for chickens as they're not likely to be comparable. Also you need to be really careful about recontamination risk if you're packing after processing as that's often where things go wrong.
Here is where to start
Then reach out to either Niagara College or UoG both have great resources that will be able to help
Since you state your pH is 4.5, you MAY be able to water bath only, but you'll need a schedule process (e.g. processing steps provided by a competant authority) to follow
Scheduled process
(Traitement programmé)
The Preventive Controls requirements in Part 4 of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations define "scheduled process" as meaning "a process in which a treatment is applied to a food to render the food commercially sterile, taking into account the critical physical and chemical factors that affect the treatment's effectiveness."