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Convenience foods

Stabilizer solutions for convenience food products - convenient for you

Modern food technology is concentrating increasingly on the development of “convenience foods”. Food products are now expected to be convenient as well as tasty and high in quality. They have to be quick to prepare, easy to serve and to transport, and have a long shelf life. Additionally, they often must meet consumer expectations in areas such portion control, safety, ethics, variety, environmental considerations, nutritional value and fun appeal.

Sauces, dressings & spreads

To give sauces, dressings and soups their final texture and imbue “ready-to-use” products with a home-made appeal, emulsifiers, bulking agents and stabilizers are needed to stabilize and texturize the products and extend their shelf life. Cargill’s expertise can help our customers to choose the right ingredients for a variety of stress factors during processing, such as thermal and shear treatments, medium and requested shelf life conditions, or elements to suspend.

When using margarine as frying fat, the water component has a strong tendency to spatter and the protein components to separate and settle on the bottom of the hot pan where they burn. Selecting the right emulsifier system can solve this problem. In the case of low and reduced-fat spreads, their higher water content makes emulsification more critical. Good water-in-oil emulsification properties as well as immobilization properties are needed to provide sufficient emulsion stability. Synergistic functions of different emulsifiers and the right selection of starches and colloids, can help meet both requirements.

Ready-to-use preparations

By mixing a powder preparation into milk, water or fruit, the user can prepare, in cold or hot conditions, at home or in food services, a wide range of products such as milk puddings, instant mousses, jellies, bakery custards, jams, sauces and cakes.

We can offer a complete range of texturizers, with or without lecithins, to improve the dispersion and hydration of a powder mix. Selecting the most suitable starches, malto-dextrins, colloids and functional systems will enable you to meet your products requirements.

Instant products

Instant products that the consumer has to reconstitute by dispersing/dissolving them in water, milk etc. were probably the first generation of “convenience foods” that appeared on the market. Typical instant products are: Dried milk products (whole milk, skimmed milk, filled milk); cocoa and chocolate drinks, soups and sauces, protein powders and milk replacement products.

Using the right emulsifier system and process conditions can help with any difficulties with dissolving granules in these products. Our service team for instant products is happy to deal with technical queries.

Ready Meals – baby and Infant foods

Whatever the packaging, portion size and shelf-life technology, all those products need to be stabilized and texturized in order that they can present a home made feeling and taste when eaten at home or on-the-go. There are also particular regulatory requirements relating to Baby or infant foods, which we can help you to meet thanks to adapted manufacturing processes.

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