INTRODUCTIONChicken nugget is a chicken product made from either
meat slurry or chicken breast cut to shape, breaded or battered.
Then deep fried or baked. Fast food restaurant typically fry their
nugget in vegetable oil such as coconut oil or palm oil. Inventor
of the chicken nugget come from Cornell University professor Robert
C. Baker who died in 2006 and the one who proposed a prototype
frozen breaded chicken stick in 1963 (McKenna 2012). The invention
come in mind of him when he try to help his parents who own a
poultry farm. For years chicken were sold as a whole compared to
pork and beef, making it inconvenient and inefficient. While he
work at Cornell he come up with many processed chicken food such as
chicken sausage, chicken patties chicken bologna, chicken hot dog
including chicken nugget. More important than the product
themselves was what Baker developed to create those product, a
method that processed chicken, which allow the meat to be shaped in
any way possible.Rumours saying that the popular chicken McNugget
from McDonalds which made from processed living chick made people
hold themselves away from chicken nugget after that, they have
image in their mind saying that all chicken nugget are made through
cruel process, till it makes McDonalds itself have to make a video
inside their production company to enlighten people what exactly
happening in the factory. Also, the fact that nowadays most of
chicken nugget we have in restaurant or cold store are not totally
chicken meat, only 40% to 50% of a piece of chicken nugget are made
from muscle tissue, the rest made from fat, bones, blood vessel and
cartilage. (Daily Mail Reporter, 2013).All those bad image on
regular chicken nugget are the reason why I want to make a chicken
nugget which is healthy and made from more than 50% muscle tissue
from chicken. Nowadays people becomes aware of what they eat and
consume every day, because they know that everything that get
through their mouth eventually will become what they are and effect
their health and wellbeing. Especially children, they love chicken
nugget because of it taste, softness and also its small portion
size which easy to hold for them who have small hand. They do not
know what they eat, is it healthy for them or not so their health
responsibilities goes to their parents, eating those chicken nugget
might get their children obese as eating behavior is one of the
factors. The number of obesity increases every year. The percentage
of children aged 611 years in the United States who were obese
increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. Similarly, the
percentage of adolescents aged 1219 years who were obese increased
from 5% to nearly 21% over the same periodFLOW CHART OF VEGETABLE
STUFFED CHICKEN NUGGET PRODUCTIONRaw material (vegetable)
Raw material (chicken breast/fat)Sorting/Grading
Washing/Peeling/ Cutting
Grinder
BlenderBlanching
MixerDrying
Former
Mixer (Batter)
Mixer (Tempura)
Fryer
Freezer
Packaging
EXPLANATION ON UNIT OPERATION INVOLVED IN VEGETABLE STUFFED
CHICKEN NUGGETRaw material (vegetable) The vegetable selected will
be consist of three different vegetable such as green peas, corn,
carrot, cauliflower, long bean and broccoli Those vegetables will
be coming from selected farm and chemicals free either from
fertiliser nor pesticide. A mixture of four vegetables in which
none of the vegetables is less than 8 percent by weight nor more
than 35 percent by weight of all the frozen mixed vegetables are
selected. Freezing is often considered the simplest and most
natural way of preservation for vegetables (Cano, 1996). Frozen
vegetables and potatoes form a significant proportion of the market
in terms of frozen food consumption (Mallett, 1993). The quality of
frozen vegetables depends on the quality of fresh products, since
freezing does not improve product quality. Pre-process handling,
from the time vegetables are picked until ready to eat, is one of
the major concerns in quality retention. The choice of the right
cultivar and maturity before the crop is harvested are the two most
important factors that affecting raw material quality of the
vegetables. Raw material characteristics are usually related to the
vegetable cultivar, crop production, crop maturity, harvesting
practices, crop storage, transport, and factory reception. The
choice of crop cultivars is mostly based on their suitability for
frozen preservation in terms of factory yield and product quality
(Cano, 1996). Besides practices in the field and factors during
growth of crop can also have a significant effect on quality of
harvesting vegetables. Those practices include site selection for
growth, nutrition of crop, and use of agricultural chemicals to
control pests or diseases. The maturity assessment for harvesting
is one of the most difficult parts of the production. In addition
to conventional methods, new instruments and tests have been
developed to predict the maturity of crops that help determining
the optimum harvest time, although the maturity assessment differs
according to crop variety (Hui et al., 2004).
Sorting/ Grading Performed prior to sizing and grading. This
step involves the removal of over mature, too small, severely
damaged, deformed or rotting vegetables. This is very important
operation unit where it sorting the produce in grades or in
categories of its quality. Very small vegetable is usually
mechanically removed by mesh screens, pre-sizing belts or chains,
desired product will be left behind or maybe past through the
indicator. Bruised, rotted, off-shaped units, wilted or yellow
leaves are usually removed by hand. Besides for vegetable where
water dipping is possible, differential floatation could be used to
separate rejects. In addition to this, detergents and brushes can
be used to remove soil, latex, insects, pesticides etc. After that
those cleaned vegetables should be dried using air dryer. Those
rejected vegetables could be disposed as animal feed, sanitary
fillings or organic soil amendments.
NEPRO Automatic Food Grading Machine
Washing/ Peeling/ Cutting Washing is normally carried out in
basins with recirculating water, or simply with still water that is
continuously replaced. Washing consists of eliminating the dirt
sticking to the material before it enters the processing line, thus
avoiding complications deriving from the possible contamination of
the raw material. The washing must be performed using clean water
and if necessary should be made potable by adding sodium
hypochlorite, 10 ml of 10% solution for every 100 litres of
water.
SORMAC vegetable washer type GWM
Peeling is performed on a regular basis. It consists of the
removal of the skin of vegetable. It performed by using physical
devices like knives or similar instruments, by using heat or
chemical methods. Such methods basically aiming to bring about the
decomposition of the walls of the external cells of the skin, so
that the skin is removed as a result of the tissue's loss of
integrity. Peeling is a unit operation that allows for a better
presentation of the product, and at the same time enhance sensory
quality especially for the material with a firmer and rougher
texture is eliminated. Moreover, the skin will presents a colour
that will be affected by the thermal processes normally used in
processing methods.SORMAC Knife Peeler KP60
Cutting is an operation that makes it possible to achieve
different objectives, like an even penetration of heat in thermal
processes, uniform drying and make it easier to be mixed with the
grinded chicken meat. In the specific case of drying, cutting
enhances the surface/volume ratio, which increases the efficiency
of the process. When performing the cutting operation, special care
must be taken, the cutting tools or devices must produce clean and
clear. In other words, they must not cause excessive damage to the
tissue, to avoid detrimental effects like a change in colour, and
subsequently a change in the product's flavour. Moreover, the
cutting must be performed in such a way as to allow for a viable
industrial performance. Urschel DiversaCut 2110 Dicer
Blanching and Drying Exposure of the vegetables to boiling water
or steam for a brief period of time to inactivate enzymes.
Practically every vegetable needs to be blanched and promptly
cooled prior to freezing, since heating slows or stops the enzyme
action, which causes vegetables to grow and mature. After
maturation, enzymes can cause loss in quality, flavour, colour,
texture, and nutrients. If vegetables are not heated sufficiently,
the enzymes will continue to be active during frozen storage and
may cause the vegetables to toughen or develop off-flavours and
colours. Blanching also causes wilting or softening of vegetables,
making them easier to pack. It destroys some bacteria and helps
remove any surface dirt (Desrosier and Tressler, 1977). Blanching
in hot water at 70 to 105 C has been associated with the
destruction of enzyme activity. Blanching is usually carried out
between 75 and 95 C for 1 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of
individual vegetable pieces (Holdsworth, 1983). Blanched vegetables
should be promptly cooled down to control and minimize the
degradation of soluble and heat-labile nutrients (Deitrich et al.,
1977). Best to use steam rather than hot water in the blanching
process, mainly to avoid the loss of soluble solids, like
water-soluble vitamins, which occurs when hot water is used. Right
after the blanching process over, the vegetable needed to be dry
and let the water drip on a conveyerVapor-Flow Rotary Steam
Blancher
Raw Material (Chicken meat) Meat can be defined as the muscle
tissue of slaughter animals 80% of the chicken nugget will be
consist of muscle tissue and the rest is fat as it will increase
the palatability of the chicken nuggets. The part of chicken meat
that will be selected in the process is GRADE 1 deboned breast meat
which consist of breast and chicken filet and also tight meat.
Chicken meat will be supplied by selected slaughterhouse and farm
which it hygiene and sanitation practice were applied in the
process and the chicken free from disease
Grinding In this unit we try to grind those chicken meat into
small coarse particle meat for further processing A meat grinder is
a machine used to force meat or meat trimmings by means of a
feeding worm (auger) under pressure through a horizontally mounted
cylinder (barrel). At the end of the barrel there is a cutting
system consisting of star-shaped knives rotating with the feeding
worm and stationary perforated discs (grinding plates). The
perforations of the grinding plates normally range from 1 to 13mm.
The meat is compressed by the rotating feeding auger, pushed
through the cutting system and extrudes through the holes in the
grinding plates after being cut by the revolving star knives.
Simple equipment has only one star knife and grinder plate, but
normally a series of plates and rotary knives is used. The degree
of mincing is determined by the size of the holes in the last
grinding plate. PSS RM 3000 Meat Grinder
Blender Blender or mixer are used to blend meat and spices, or
coarse and finely chopped meat. For the production of Vegetable
Stuffed Chicken Nugget, a general blender machine will be use.
Generally consists of a rectangular or round bottom vessel through
which two parallel shafts operate. Various paddles are mounted on
those shafts to mix the meat. The mixer is discharged through
tilting by 90 degrees. Some blender are designed as vacuum blender,
as the blending under vacuum (exclusion of oxygen) has advantages
for the development of desirable product colour and texture.
Material will be added into the blender during this process is
granulated garlic, salt, black pepper and also binder. Phosphates,
described in the previous section, act as binding agents by forming
a sticky layer of swollen protein on the surface of a fillet. Many
other substances, including natural and synthetic gums, have been
proposed as binders. The most used are salts of alginic acid,
especially the sodium, potassium and propylene glycol salts.
Blending process will be taking over 15 minutes till the mixture
become even.
Meat Mixers AP300/AP500 Large-Scale Production
Mixing (Vegetables & Blended chicken meat) After the
grounded chicken meat done under blending process with other
ingredient, mixing process take place including dried vegetables
from the left hand side process. The mixing cannot be done for a
very long period of time because it will cause excessive damage to
the vegetable tissue added into the mixture. The optimum time for
mixing is 5 minutes The paddle used in the mixing also have to be
taken into consideration
Forming There are various type of forming or moulding machine.
There are type where the product is loaded into a self-feeding
hopper then it is forced into the forming plates by means of a
piston. When they have been filled, the plates are moved forward to
the knock-out position and the contents are deposited onto the out
feed conveyor. There also type where all the mixture are in a kind
of roller and the meat will be press from inside-out through a
mould onto a conveyor shaped like the ball, the boots, the bells
and the bowtie.
Mixer (Batter) Battering consist of dipping the meat pieces in a
semi-liquid mixture of oil, eggs, water and spices. Battering also
done as a way for the breading become efficient and easy. Moulded
chicken nugget which on a conveyer gut under a light batter machine
make the semi-liquid batter evenly covered on a surface of the
nugget ready for breading.
Mixer (Tempura) Coating with flour, fat/flour mixes and/or
breadcrumb The tempura machine must be able to handle high
viscosity of tempura batter Take place by applying tempura over the
nugget on a conveyor There is also another type of method to apply
tempura such as the nugget will pass onto a conveyer covered in
tempura breading then it also will be covered with tempura falling
from top
Marel Townsend Tempura Applicator
Fryer The reason we applying heat treatment after chicken nugget
done processed is for the enhancement of desirable texture, flavour
and colour, in order to make meat products more palatable and
appetizing for consumption. Also for the reduction of microbial
content thus achieving the necessary preservation effect for an
extended shelf life of the product and also for the food safety
effect by eliminating potential food poisoning agents. The heating
parameters to be applied in meat processing can vary considerably
in temperature and time depending on the type of product. Heat
treatment methods cause various physical-chemical alterations in
meat, which result in the beneficial sensory and hygienic effects
on the processed products. Most processed meat products are heat
treated during manufacture and cooled down in a next step, as they
undergo shorter or longer cold storage periods for distribution and
sales. Also heat treatment is applied to stabilize the coatings on
the meat surface. This short heat treatment in hot fat/oil (approx.
+175C) as part of the processing must be seen as a pre-treatment
only and does not cook the product. The final heat treatment is
carried out by the consumer right before eating. Vegetable Stuffed
Chicken Nugget fall under fresh processed meat product. Generally
these products are meat mixes composed of comminute muscle meat
with varying quantities of animal fat. Products are salted only,
curing is not practiced. Non-meat ingredients are added in smaller
quantities for improvement of flavour and binding.
Freezer Chicken meat is a highly perishable products and soon
becomes unfit to eat and possibly dangerous to health through
microbial growth, chemical change and breakdown by endogenous
enzymes even though it already passed through the pre-heat
treatment process. Freezing must be used to minimize any physical,
biochemical and microbiological changes affecting quality in
storage. During freezing most of the water content of the meat,
about 80 percent, solidifies into pure ice crystals, accompanied by
a separation of dissolved solids. A product can be considered
frozen when its centre has a temperature of -12C or less. To reach
this temperature the product passes through the temperature range
of maximum crystallization (from -1 to -5C). The speed of freezing
is a very important factor as frozen meat quality depends mainly on
the size of the ice crystal formed: the lower the speed of freezing
the larger the size of the crystals. Freezing commercially done at
-29C and domestically at -18C. Those temperature is now a standard
method of preserving for periods of 1-2 years. Recommended freezer
is cryogenic freezer. Cryogenic freezing is a relatively new method
of freezing in which the food is exposed to an atmosphere below -60
C through direct contact with liquefied gases such as nitrogen or
carbon dioxide (Hung and Kim, 1996). This type of system differs
from other freezing systems since it is not connected to a
refrigeration plant; the refrigerants used are liquefied in large
industrial installations and shipped to the food-freezing factory
in pressure vessels. Thus, the small size and mobility of cryogenic
freezers allow for flexibility in design and efficiency of the
freezing application. Low initial investment and rather high
operating costs are typical for cryogenic freezers (Persson and
Lohndal, 1993).
CRYOLINE MT Cryogenic Tunnel Freezer
Packaging The basic purpose of packaging is to protect meat and
meat products from undesirable impacts on quality including
microbiological and physio-chemical alterations. Packaging protects
foodstuffs during processing, storage and distribution from
contamination by dirt, by micro-organism, by parasite, by toxic
substances, influences that affecting colour, smell and taste and
also loss or uptake of moisture. A range of synthetic materials
suitable for meat packaging are available mainly in the form of
plastic films or foils. Packaging must be flexible, mechanical
strength, light weight, odourless, hygienic, easy recycling,
resistance to oil and fats, good barrier against gases, sealing
capability and low-cost. Plastics of interest for cold storage are:
polyamide (PA) polyethylene (PE) polyester (polyterephthalic acid
ester) (PET/PETP) polyvinylchloride (PVC) polyvinyliden chloride
(PVDC)
OTHER HEALTHY PREFERRED NUGGET PRODUCT
TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) or TSP (Textured Soy Protein)
Traditional route of utilization of soybean Extraction with water
as in the production of soymilk. Precipitation from water extracts
as in the preparation of soybean curd (tofu) Fermentation processes
as in the elaboration of soybean paste (miso), soysauce (sho-yu) ,
tempeh, fermented soybean curd (su-fu) For those who is totally
vegetarian they can always go for this TVP Applied to soy protein
products, the terms "texturization or texturing" mean the
development of a physical structure which will provide, when eaten,
a sensation of eating meat. Meat "texture" is a complex concept
comprising visual aspect (visible fibres), chewiness, elasticity,
tenderness and juiciness. The principal physical elements of meat
which create the texture complex are: the muscle fibres and the
connective tissue. Defatted soy flour with a high protein
solubility index is first conditioned with live steam, before
entering the extruder proper. Well controlled conditioning is
essential for good texturization and product uniformity. The
moisture content of the feed is very important. A moisture level of
about 20-25% is used for texturization. The conditioned flour
usually assumes the form of small spheres. The flour-water mixture
is next fed into the extruder and picked up by the screw. As it
advances along the barrel, it is rapidly heated by the action of
friction as well as the energy supplied by the heating elements
around the barrel. The high pressures attained through the
compression mechanism explained above permits heating to 150-180C.
This rapid "pressure cooking" process transforms the mass into a
thermoplastic "melt", hence the name of "thermoplastic extrusion"
by which the process is also known. The directional shear forces
causes some alignment of the high molecular weight component while
the proteins undergo extensive heat denaturation. The sudden
release of pressure causes instant evaporation of some of the water
and "puffing". The result is a porous, laminar structure. Puffing
and therefore porosity can be controlled by monitoring melt
temperature at the die. If a dense product is desired, the melt is
cooled at the final section of the barrel, just before entering the
die.
Soya Nugget Extruder
The extrudate is cut continuously by a rotating knife as it
emerges from the die. It may be dried and sold as a shelf-stable
product, or it can be hydrated, flavoured, mixed with other
ingredients, shaped and marketed, usually, as a frozen food. While
texturizing the soy material, extrusion cooking also provides the
heat treatment necessary to reduce the microbial load and to
inactivate the trypsin inhibitor. It should be noted that, despite
the high temperatures in the extruder, trypsin inhibitor
inactivation may be incomplete, due to the relatively short
processing time.
Chunks of extrusion texturized soy protein products and spun
fibre based preparations are marketed as "imitation meat" or "meat
analogs". The market for these products was, at first, limited to
the relatively small sector of vegetarians. Recently there is a
marked trend to reduce the consumption of red meat, associated with
the demand for low-cholesterol foods. At the same time, the
industry has been successful in developing more attractive meat
analogs made from rehydrated textured soy proteins, alone or in
combination with wheat gluten. These products are marketed as
flavoured, fully prepared, frozen ready-to eat entres. The present
marketing strategy for meat analogs is to present them to the
public as new, high quality products, and not as inexpensive
substitutes for meat. So far, this strategy seems to be successful.
The market for these sophisticated (and by no means inexpensive)
products is rapidly expanding.
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