To maintain your corporation working effectively and easily you usually freeze your merchandise or components. Whether or not it’s pie crusts to arrange for the foremost Thanksgiving rush, meat to get a bulk low cost, or a bathtub of ice cream for the desserts you serve.

Freezing retains them good for longer. However, should you don’t freeze your meals nicely, it’d develop these dried out areas on the surfaces. The dreaded freezer burn. It could actually make a frozen product utterly ineffective, and unsellable.

Fortunately, you’ll be able to stop freezer burn from occurring, utilizing a couple of primary pointers, permitting you to securely freeze your meals, with out risking dropping out on product high quality.

Freezer burn = dried frozen meals

Usually talking, by freezing you’ll be able to prolong 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 nicely. That’s, should you retailer them correctly.

Nonetheless, should you don’t retailer them correctly it’s possible you’ll discover that after some weeks, or months, seemingly dry spots kind 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 identify as a result of the meals hasn’t really burnt within the conventional sense, due to warmth. As an alternative, the meals merely dried out, which can sound counterintuitive as nicely. 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 could actually 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 exhausting to convey again the unique texture. However, there’s lots you are able to do to forestall it from occurring!

Stopping Freezer Burn

1. Use a vacuum pack

The most effective methods to forestall freezer burn from occurring 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 in opposition to the product. This makes it nearly unattainable for water to show right into a gasoline and depart the product. For water to go away the product it wants to have the ability to transfer into (dry) air. If there’s no surrounding air, it might’t evaporate.

Test your packaging specs

To make sure that the vacuum pack really protects you product you’ll want to be sure it’s suited to freezing and vacuum packaging your product. A very powerful parameter to have a look at is how straightforward it’s for moisture to maneuver via the packaging.

Though many plastics look as in the event that they’re impenetrable to water, most aren’t. Water gases can nonetheless transfer via the fabric, be it at a really gradual price. 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 utility.

Typically, 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 tug 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 in opposition to 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 comparable to grated cheese.

2. Fill it up

To ensure that a product to develop freezer burn, the water within the product ought to be capable to enter the encompassing 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 potential. 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 movement

Water evaporates extra rapidly if the evaporated water can rapidly transfer away from the product itself. The identical occurs in a freezer. If there’s a robust movement of air, the air movement will transfer away any water vapor that types. Consequently, the air surrounding merchandise stays fairly dry. This once more makes it simpler for brand 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, it’s possible you’ll want the air movement to freeze the merchandise rapidly. However, as soon as frozen, you run the chance 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 utility, you might 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. It’s possible you’ll be restricted to a shorter period of time.

Methods to forestall freezer burn

Freezing merchandise is a good way to scale back prices and put together for top quantity durations in your corporation. Nonetheless, improperly storing merchandise in your freezer can lead to irreversible freezer burn, a significant high quality defect.

However, by correctly packaging your product, and by decreasing the general time within the freezer, you’ll be able to stop freezer burn in lots of circumstances.

Use these to design your subsequent packaging options and inside processes. Need assistance with this? Let me know what it’s you’re fighting and we’ll focus on if and the way I can assist in a discovery name.