Nuts are the popular snack of choice among consumers who are aiming for a healthy, nutritious diet. Manufacturers can leverage on its growing demand through enhancing nut production lines with advanced processing equipment.
Health-conscious consumers are driving demand for nutritional snacks, making nuts a contender in the “better-for-you” snack category. The expanding list of coating and seasoning options provides opportunity for snack processors to capture this market. High performance roasting and drying equipment enhances nut recipes and ensures consistent results in the production line — regardless of flavours, coatings, blends, recipes or cooking technique.
Oil roasting and frying
Roasted nuts are cooked by submersion into hot oil to fry the product. Basic frying techniques work well with common nut varieties like peanuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, and walnuts. Roasting nuts enhance flavour and increases shelf life. Higher value nuts like macadamias require specialist frying techniques and high-quality cooking oil to enrich their flavour.
The Heat and Control HeatWave Fryer and Oil Roaster range of fryers have revolutionised oil roasting with a breakthrough design that roasts the nuts through curtains of clean filtered oil. The oil passes over the product and through the conveyor, immediately removing fines.
The consistent oil flow and wiping action of the conveyor belt cleans fines on the full width of the pan while the total system oil volume circulates through a filter in a matter of seconds, producing the highest quality product and cleanest operation of any nut oil roaster. HeatWave Fryers and Oil Roasters provide manufacturers with savings through reduced oil usage. In addition, the HeatWave has the lowest oil volume of any continuous oil roaster.
Dry roasting
The Rotary Dryer Roaster (RDR) gives processors control in drying or roasting with its continuous, gentle, and sanitary manner. High volume convective airflow, combined with gentle rotary motion, ensures all product is uniformly treated with heated air. Operators have control over roasting and drying process variables, enhancing colour, flavour, and texture of the product.
The RDR’s design handles the raw product in a continuous, high-density manner through a flighted drum that ensures positive motion. The drum design facilitates a continuous first–in–first–out product flow, and has independent fans and burners in multiple convection zones. This provides complete process control that can be tailored to numerous product profiles.
Seasoning and coating systems
Seasoning and coating systems ensures consistent, uniform application of both liquid and dry seasonings. They provide accurately metered and sprayed liquids, and precisely measured dry powders which ensure even seasoning coverage suitable for applications such as glazing, oil, water, salt, sugar, dough, chocolate, yoghurt, batters and spice-based seasonings.
Food manufacturers enjoy significant cost savings when using a single source supplier. Heat and Control has complete solutions for seasoned and coated nut snacks including frying, dryer and roasting, seasoning, coating, conveying and controls.
This article was first published in the February/March 2022 issue of Food & Beverage Asia.
