Industrial Steam Cooking Machine Manufacturers

Industrial steam cooking — types and food applications

Steam cooking uses steam (saturated or superheated water vapour) as the heat transfer medium to cook food products. Steam cooking offers several advantages over immersion water cooking: no leaching of water-soluble nutrients, flavours, or colour into cooking water (the product is cooked in a vapour environment rather than in liquid water); faster heating due to the high latent heat of steam; and cleaner, drier product surface after cooking compared to water cooking. Industrial steam cooking equipment types include: batch steamers (enclosed chambers with steam injection — product on trays or in baskets is loaded, the chamber sealed, steam applied for the cook cycle, and the chamber opened for discharge); continuous steam cookers (product on a conveyor belt passes through a steam-filled tunnel — continuous operation for high throughput, suitable for portions that can be conveyed individually); continuous steam injection cookers (steam is injected directly into a product stream flowing through a tube or vessel under pressure — used for liquid or semi-liquid food ingredients, soups, and sauces); and steam blanchers for vegetable and fruit pre-treatment (brief steam exposure at atmospheric pressure before drying, freezing, or packing).