Wednesday 26 April 2023 is Stop Food Waste’s 7th year – a global day of action created by Compass Group to drive awareness, and to provide solutions that address food waste.

Compass Group are asking you all to think responsibly when purchasing food.  Many restaurants, cafés and stores are offering surplus foods to customers using apps like ‘too good to go’ which helps prevent perfectly good food from being thrown in the bin.

DC Norris have made a conscious effort to support our customers in reducing food waste. We encourage our customers to take trial samples with them, or donate leftover produce to local food banks or food service business’.

What you can do to help:

Prevent food waste at the source by storing food optimally, making use of every edible part of the ingredient and planning meals ahead of time.
Inspire others to waste less and repurpose more.
Repurpose food by redistributing any surplus to your local community, or giving a second life to ingredients that most commonly go to waste.

Find out more about Stop Food Waste Day via their website – STOP FOOD WASTE DAY

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Traditionally known for their world-leading food and beverage process equipment, DC Norris are also experts in dog and cat wet pet food processing solutions.

The Company has worked hand in hand with customers to develop a variety of innovative cooking and cooling methods to give pet food manufacturers a choice depending on their desired product.

Jet Process

DCN recently launched the award-winning Jet Process System which is ideal for those manufacturers who require reduced processing times, large throughputs and high temperature sterilisation.

We look at some of the benefits of Jet Process:

High Speed & Large Throughputs

Jet Process allows the dog or cat food to reach temperatures of up to 148°C in seconds.

Powders such as gums, gels, vitamins and hydrocolloids are entrained, heated, mixed and hydrated in single figure minutes.

A recent installation required a footprint of only 120 sqm. and can produce 18,000Kgs of wet pet food per hour.

Small Footprint

With Jet Process pet food manufacturers can reduce the amount of processing vessels used. The system can cook, entrain (mix and hydrate hydrocolloids) and sterilise in a single pass removing the need for large retorts.

A traditional wet pet food system may have a large footprint and incorporate multiple jacketed or pressure vessels, emulsifiers, heat exchangers and retorts.

Low Water, Energy & Labour Costs

Jet Process removes the need for multiple vessels which have more processing stages using excess energy and increasing cost.   Large volumes of water and caustic are also needed for the vessels to clean and remove burn-on.

Jet Process can be operated by just one person, reducing the amount of labour needed.

Sous Vide for Pet Food Processing

A recent trend in the pet food industry is for bespoke fresh prepared human-grade dog and cat food, and this is where our Sous Vide Systems may be more suitable.

This unique cooking process helps to maintain nutrients and maximise flavour for happy, healthy pets.   Sous Vide dog food is vacuum sealed in air-tight plastic pouches that are cooked in water for a long period of time at a low temperature.

Sous Vide requires specialist packaging, vacuum sealing, a Cook Tank with temperature probes and controls, and appropriate chilling equipment.

Health Benefits

High temperature cooking methods often reduce the nutrients present in meats and vegetables. By lowering the cooking temperature, the sous vide cooking method ensures that foods retain as much of their nutritional value as possible.

High Yields

Sous Vide makes in virtually impossible to overcook or burn foods which dramatically increases yields. The cooking method also produces more flavourful foods without the use of added ingredients and fats as it locks in the natural juices.

Minimised Process & Labour Costs

Sous Vide cooking can be largely unsupervised, and foods cooked using this method can be cooked, chilled, stored and re-thermalized (in some applications) in the same packaging creating substantial cost savings.

DC Norris offer a variety of fully automated Sous Vide Cook Tanks for dog and cat food – contact us for further information.

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Product and Process Training is taking place in Canada this week with a customer who three years ago invested in a DCN Jet Cook system with 2 x 1000ltr Kettles, Braising Bar, In-Vessel Homogeniser and Recipe Manager Software Systems.

Our customer has multiple operations in Canada and Europe covering chilled and frozen foods in the foodservice, hospitality, hospital, and community services sectors.  With a turn-over in excess of £150m, they are a forward thinking and innovative company who are constantly redeveloping and improving their product portfolio and quality.

Recognising the need to be get the most of their equipment, they commissioned us to a week of advanced product and process training.  Their aim is to reduce their processing times and stages, whilst also improving the finished product with reduced starch and no burn-on.

Sweet & Sour Sauce

 The first product we made was a Sweet & Sour Sauce, complete with onions, peppers and pineapple.

Braising Bar used to heat up the oil, followed by the onions and garlic.
Water was added along with a percentage of the IQF vegetables.
Jet Cook was used to heat the mix from 15-80◦C in single figure minutes.
Remaining vegetables and ingredients added.

Result:

The finished product had a smooth high gloss sauce base with large vegetable particulate which still had a crunch and very good colour.

The Jet Cook method reduced the processing time and the amount of time the vegetables had to be agitated and heated.

Using a traditional Steam Jacketed Kettle, the heating process from 15-80◦C would have much longer at 15 minutes.

Starch was added at 75◦C with the Jet Cook on low shear, followed shortly after by the sugar.  This process change from the original allows the starch to maximise its hydration before the sugar takes up the excess liquid.

Beef & Barley Concentrated Soup

Result:

Using the same food processing equipment, we reduced the processing time by 30 minutes.  The final product had good viscosity, particulate integrity and colour due to the improved starch hydration.

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One of the questions we may get asked is – How does Jet Cook differ from traditional Steam Jacketed Kettle Cooking? We put this to the test this week during trials in our South African Test Kitchen with one of the food industries leading branded companies.

We demonstrated some of DCN Jet Cook’s benefits and versatility on two very different products – Chilli Sauce and a Dried Breakfast Cereal.  The customer had previously had issues with burn-on using their existing Steam Jacketed Kettles, which affected taste and cleaning times.  They also wanted to see how they could reduce energy costs by shortening processing times.

Using DCN’s Jet Cook, In-Vessel Homogeniser and Braising Bar, we were able to produce the following results:

Chilli Sauce

Jet Cook Process:

In-Tank Jet Cook rapidly hydrates the starches.
Addition of vegetables and sugar.
Product heated to 95°C.
Discharge.

Results:

Zero burn-on and 100% gelatinisation of the starches.
DCN’s process used approximately 55% less energy.
The Kettle only needing cleaning once, at the end of the day.
The finished product had good viscosity, particulate integrity, colour and flavour.

Dried Breakfast Cereal

 Jet Cook Process:

DCN’s In-Tank Jet Cook System and In-vessel Homogeniser produced a high brix and high viscosity paste, containing more than 27% powders.
The paste is pumped to a drying line for further processing.

 Results:

 Zero burn-on.
100% yields.

If you would like to book a trial with our experienced product and process team in either our UK or South African Product Development Kitchens – please contact on info@dcnorris.com

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Earlier in the month, we welcomed DCN North America’s Vice-President Matt Klein to our UK headquarters.

Over three days Matt met with the UK team and learnt more about our manufacturing processes and capabilities.  We also ran a series of trials in our Product Development Kitchen for Wild Mushroom Sauce, Creamy Caramel and ending with premium Pet Food, showing the range of products that can be produced on our versatile Kettle Systems.

These visits are instrumental in maintaining the strong relationship between the two companies, and in turn developing further strategies to expand the North American branch.

You can see DC Norris NA at the NRA Show in Chicago this year, where they will be exhibiting from 20-23rd May

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This week DCN are in Qatar running advanced Jet Cook training and processing with the team at Al Manal Central Production Unit in Doha.

Following on from a very successful FIFA World Cup campaign, the team are now getting ready for the Asia Cup, as well as now suppling their own facilities with fresh meals every day.

We always enjoy working together with Al Manal as their team have a fantastic work attitude, willingness to learn and their progress is exceptional, from both the Chefs and Managers.

We produced a variety of products including Bangladeshi Dhal and a selection of Vegetable Masalas using both Jet Cook and our Braising Bar Technology.

We have supplied 6 x Ready-2-Cook Cooking Kettles with our patented Jet Cook Technology, Tumble Chillers, Pump Fill Stations, Bratt Pans and Sous Vide Systems, which are certainly being used to the fullest.

We look forward to returning soon and we wish them every success with Asia Cup and new ventures.

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January and the start of a new year often leads to people making healthy resolutions to improve their eating and drinking habits. This may mean ‘Dry January’ or ‘Veganuary’ for some, or simply an intention to eating better and exercising more.

We are all aware that too much fat and salt in our diets can harm our health, and salt reduction has been a feature of UK food policy for two decades and is accepted globally as a cost-effective strategy to improve public health.

At DC Norris, we have certainly noticed in the past few years that food manufacturers are placing more importance on the nutritional value of the meals and foods that they are producing.  There are many more ranges available such as low-calorie, vegan, vegetarian, plant-based and ‘free from’, and we have had to adapt our processes to allow for these.

Working with Sainsbury’s to remove 70% in fat and 50% in salt in their Italian Range

We began working with a group of Companies including Sainsbury’s back in 2017, when we received an £1m Innovate UK government grant to develop a system or process to reduce the fat and salt in ready meals, sauces and soups.

For two years we undertook product and process trials on Sainsbury’s recipes, using many ingredients such as starches, pre-made roux, cream and full fat milk.   It was proven that the Generation 4 Jet Processing unit could produce a healthier product whilst also matching the taste and texture of the existing full fat and salt products.  As an additional benefit the Jet Processing System reduces the processing time from 60 minutes to less than 15 minutes,

“Jet Process could remove the equivalent of 23 London double decker buses of fat and salt from Sainsbury’s Italian sauces and soups in 12 months!” 

This multi-functional simultaneous process creates droplets of fat and water to sub 1 micron levels, and has resulted in DCN being able to

remove the equivalent of 23 London double decker buses of fat and salt from Sainsbury’s Italian sauces and soups in 12 months.  A 70% reduction in fat and 50% reduction in salt has been proven and documented by both Nottingham University and Sainsbury’s UK.

Vegan / Plant-based / Free-from Ranges

DC Norris has also been working with customers to overcome some of the challenges that they have seen when producing these new types of convenience foods. One of these issues is long processing times which can damage sensitive ingredients if using a traditional Steam Jacketed 

Kettle.  There are also challenges when you remove standard key ingredients, for example dairy, flour and eggs.   Ingredient replacements such as soya, whey proteins and vegetarian cheese are very sensitive to heat and excess agitation which can damage the product taste, structure and appearance.

DCN put their experience into practice when working with Dragon’s Den’s Kirsty Henshaw who launched a new factory which only creates ‘free from’ products.  She enlisted the help of DCN’s Product and Process Team to convert her recipes from traditional jacketed processing methods to Jet Cook.

If you would like to speak to our experienced Product and Process Team about your recipes and product range and how we can help, please get in touch – info@dcnorris.com

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