To maintain your online business operating effectively and easily you frequently freeze your merchandise or substances. Whether or not it’s pie crusts to arrange for the key Thanksgiving rush, meat to get a bulk low cost, or a bath of ice cream for the desserts you serve.
Freezing retains them good for longer. However, in the event you don’t freeze your meals effectively, it’d develop these dried out areas on the surfaces. The dreaded freezer burn. It may well make a frozen product utterly ineffective, and unsellable.
Fortunately, you’ll be able to forestall freezer burn from taking place, utilizing just a few primary pointers, permitting you to soundly freeze your meals, with out risking shedding out on product high quality.
Freezer burn = dried frozen meals
Typically talking, by freezing you’ll be able to lengthen the shelf lifetime of a variety of meals, with out dramatically impacting their high quality. Meat, many (unfrosted) muffins, ice cream, cookies, doughs, even cheeses, can all be frozen effectively. That’s, in the event you retailer them correctly.
Nonetheless, in the event you don’t retailer them correctly you might discover that after some weeks, or months, seemingly dry spots type on the meals. It may be a whitish-looking spot on a steak, or a dried-out chunk of ice cream.
That is freezer burn. It’s a counterintuitive title as a result of the meals hasn’t truly burnt within the conventional sense, due to warmth. As an alternative, the meals merely dried out, which can sound counterintuitive as effectively. How can meals dry out within the freezer? Hasn’t all water solidified into ice?
An irreversible course of
However no. Even in a freezer, moisture can and can evaporate. It may well even flip right into a gasoline from strong ice instantly, with out melting first. That is referred to as sublimation. Sublimation is a really gradual course of within the freezer, which is why most freezer burn takes weeks, or months to develop. As soon as it’s occurred, it is rather laborious to convey again the unique texture. However, there’s rather a lot you are able to do to stop it from taking place!
Stopping Freezer Burn
1. Use a vacuum pack
Top-of-the-line methods to stop freezer burn from taking place is to hoover wrap the meals earlier than storing it within the freezer. By vacuum packing meals you pull out all of the air and, consequently, the packaging itself sits tightly towards the product. This makes it nearly inconceivable for water to show right into a gasoline and depart the product. For water to depart the product it wants to have the ability to transfer into (dry) air. If there’s no surrounding air, it could actually’t evaporate.
Examine your packaging specs
To make sure that the vacuum pack actually protects you product it’s essential make sure that it’s fitted to freezing and vacuum packaging your product. An important parameter to have a look at is how simple it’s for moisture to maneuver by the packaging.
Although many plastics look as in the event that they’re impenetrable to water, most aren’t. Water gases can nonetheless transfer by the fabric, be it at a really gradual fee. Nonetheless, in a freezer you don’t need this gradual motion both.
Search for the water vapor permeability of your packaging materials and speak to your packaging provider about your particular software.
Generally, vacuum packaging can do extra hurt than good
Vacuum packing works nice for meat, cheese, and seafood. However, it doesn’t work for each meals. Think about attempting to hoover pack marshmallows. Throughout packaging, you’re pulling out all of the air, to drag a vacuum. Nonetheless, consequently, you’ll additionally pull air out of the marshmallows, inflicting them to break down. In case your product collapses on account of vacuum packaging, don’t use it.
The identical applies to merchandise that tend to stay collectively. By pulling a vacuum they’ll be pushed towards one another since all of the air in between is pulled out. This causes them to stay much more. It’s why it’s higher to not use vacuum packaging on merchandise similar to grated cheese.
2. Fill it up
To ensure that a product to develop freezer burn, the water within the product ought to have the ability to enter the encircling air. One other option to restrict the quantity of air and thus area for water to enter is by merely filling up your packaging as a lot as attainable. It’s why some ice cream model fill their ice cream tubs proper as much as the highest. That approach, freezer burn doesn’t stand an opportunity.
3. Decrease air circulate
Water evaporates extra shortly if the evaporated water can shortly transfer away from the product itself. The identical occurs in a freezer. If there’s a robust circulate of air, the air circulate will transfer away any water vapor that varieties. Consequently, the air surrounding merchandise stays fairly dry. This once more makes it simpler for brand spanking new water to sublimate from ice into gasoline. Inflicting your product to dry out!
As such, watch out with sturdy air flows in freezers the place unwrapped merchandise are saved. Sure, you might want the air circulate to freeze the merchandise shortly. However, as soon as frozen, you run the danger of freezer burn. So, both wrap merchandise, or retailer them in freezers that don’t transfer the air as a lot, so your product stays good for an extended time frame.
4. Restrict freezing instances
Lastly, if not one of the different measures work on your particular software, you’ll have to have a look at merely decreasing the general storage time in your freezer. Some merchandise merely can’t be saved for months and even years within the freezer. You could be restricted to a shorter period of time.
Methods to stop freezer burn
Freezing merchandise is a good way to scale back prices and put together for prime quantity intervals in your online business. Nonetheless, improperly storing merchandise in your freezer can lead to irreversible freezer burn, a serious high quality defect.
However, by correctly packaging your product, and by decreasing the general time within the freezer, you’ll be able to forestall freezer burn in lots of circumstances.
Use these to design your subsequent packaging options and inner processes. Need assistance with this? Let me know what it’s you’re fighting and we’ll talk about if and the way I may help in a discovery name.
