A new process has been attracting attention in the food industry. Developed by the Bremerhaven Institute for Food Technology and Bioprocess Engineering, the new method enables deep frozen fish to be defrosted in record time. And the fish tastes as fresh as the day it was caught.
Fog is a common phenomenon on the German North Sea coast. But when Dennis Fehner is shrouded in fog it is usually of his own making and he uses it in an unexpected way: to defrost fish. The Bremerhaven Institute for Food Technology and Bioprocess Engineering (BILB) has developed a new energy-saving method that can be used to defrost frozen food in record time.
“You’d think it was straight from the sea”
“The most remarkable thing about the process is that we can defrost products like frozen fish extremely quickly without impairing the quality. Quite the opposite in fact. After being defrosted, the fish is so fresh you’d think it was straight from the sea,” enthuses the 35-year-old food technologist. It may sound like alchemy but it is based on sound scientific principles. During the special defrosting process, the flesh of the fish absorbs tiny water droplets. The food technologists got the idea from the baking industry where a fine mist is used during the proving process, or to cool bread rolls. The BILB works on applied food research on behalf of the Bremen government and the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences, and is largely funded by the research assignments and projects it carries out for industry. The researchers have been working on the fish-thawing process for a good two years now.