Translating Cooking Techniques

Adding a kokumi flavor to a dry seasoning mix for making au jus that will accompany beef, for example, adds Maillard notes without the need for the customary long oven cooking. “It makes it seem as if there are pan drippings in the product,” says Formanek. “It gives both the flavor and the mouthfeel aspects.”

FULL-FLAVOR VEGGIES

The rising popularity of ethnic, regional and just plain more-flavorful cuisines has increased the demand for vegetables with flavor profiles billed as fire-roasted, flame-grilled and caramelized used in soups, burritos, pizzas and other foods.

According to Kelly, one of the problems with browning vegetables conventionally is that they easily overcook and lose moisture and volume. “There is not much in a green bean or a snap pea to hold moisture through two cooking cycles and freezing,” he says.

Browning agents can speed up the Maillard reaction and reduce cooking time, turning out vegetables with better color, texture and yield. Cut vegetables are tumbled with the browning agent before going through a conveyor oven. Kelly notes that raw vegetables coated with it and put on a pizza come out of the oven with the flavor and texture of grilled vegetables.

With time- and money-saving techniques like these at their disposal, product developers can continually inch closer to “the real thing” in manufactured foods—and the staff running the back of the house can get on with more-pressing matters, like speedy order turnaround and tighter quality control.

James Scarpa is a Chicago-based writer who specializes in food, beverages and the business of restaurants. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of the foodservice industry trade press.