100% taste, 100% naturalness and long durability. These three attributes are becoming increasingly important for consumers today. In the meantime, there are numerous different processes for preparing food accordingly. However, additives and preservatives are often added to the food. This means that the food can be kept for a long time, but it quickly loses its important and healthy properties.
There is a process that makes it possible not to impair the quality and valuable properties of food. The colour, aroma and taste are preserved, so that they hardly differ from the freshly harvested fruit. Whether raspberries, elderberries, plums or bananas – there are no limits here. The process we are talking about here is called Individual Quick Freezing. But what distinguishes this process, how does it work and what exactly makes it so special?
Individual Quick Freezing
Individual Quick Freezing, or IQF for short, refers to the process of shock freezing food. It is a deep-freezing method used in the food industry. The food is constantly moved and shock-frozen with the help of liquid nitrogen. The process usually takes only a few minutes. The food is all frozen individually, which facilitates further processing. The special feature of IQF foods is that the quality hardly suffers. Common foods where the IQF method is used are fruits, berries, vegetables, fish, seafood or even meat and poultry. Strawberries, raspberries, sour cherries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, elderberries, plums, bananas and apricots are snap-frozen.
How it works
The process of IQF originated in Canada. When a biologist was ice fishing in sub40 degree temperatures, he got the following insight. When he fished the fish out from under the ice and then threw them into the snow, they immediately became solid. Another peculiarity was that some of the fish were still alive even after they thawed out again.
This finding showed that the faster you freeze something, the smaller the ice crystals that then form. This is very good for the food as large ice crystals can damage the cells and tissue fibres.
IQF or blast frozen foods use exactly this process. Because no large ice crystals are formed, but only small ones, the fibres are not destroyed and the food does not disintegrate. If the ice crystals are too large, the fibres are compressed and the water contained in the food escapes through the cracks in the cell walls. It is therefore important with the IQF method that the food is only exposed to such cold for a short period of time. The exact time varies depending on the product and the freezer that is used.
IQF has many advantages
- the process does not take long, so you get the desired result quickly.
- the quality of the food is not affected. The texture, colour, smell and also the taste are preserved.
- because the food is frozen individually, you don’t get blocks, but you can use the frozen berries, for example, individually in pieces. It is therefore much easier to portion the respective foods and thus food waste can also be reduced.
