The term "sublimation" is known to us from the field of psychoanalysis. But it turns out that cooking also took him into service. What is the process of sublimation of products? You will learn about this in our article. We also look at the pros and cons of products subjected to this high-tech processing. Today there is freeze-dried cottage cheese, meat, fruits, butter, cereals and even vodka. There are also ready meals. Is their use safe for health? Can freeze-dried foods be included in baby food? Nutritionists continue to break spears in this regard. Of course, it is difficult to imagine a feast without the usual dishes, and the use of tubes. But in a camping trip or in situations where conventional products become unavailable, sublimates are very useful. Let us consider in more detail this type of processing on the example of cottage cheese. After all, this product, as you know, serves as a source of calcium and phosphorus for our body.
Mankind's dreams of long-term storage of products
Even at the dawn of human civilization, people wondered how to keep hunting trophies longer. At the site of primitive people, archaeologists find special pits that served as the forerunners of modern cellars. The ice age contributed to the preservation of food, but nevertheless, not all products could be stored for as long as we would like. Later they began to smoke and salt the meat, and vegetables - pickle and preserve. But with dairy products, things were different. Cottage cheese is good only in the first two days, and even then when stored in the cold. Then it requires heat treatment. It can be used for dumplings or cheesecakes, in a casserole. But here on the scene appeared sublimated cottage cheese. After all, it is about this product that we will now be talking.
What is the trick?
The sublimation method consists in deep freezing the product and then drying it. As a result, the liquid enclosed in meat or cheese turns into ice. Vacuum drying is designed to evaporate it. In this case, the ice goes into a gaseous state, bypassing the liquid. That is, freeze-dried apples and pears are fundamentally different from dried fruits. In the first processing method, all vitamins are preserved, and fruits dried in the oven lose them. Well, freeze-dried curd - what is it? The processing process remains the same. Fresh farm cottage cheese is deeply frozen, and then small ice crystals are dried. As a result, the product becomes five times lighter. To eat such cheese, it needs to be replenished with moisture. But despite the fact that the process of converting vacuum packaging into a full-fledged meal resembles steaming Mivin noodles, you should not compare freeze-dried cottage cheese with this nutritious, but useless product for health.
History of the invention of the method
Not many people know that Russia here has contributed to the development of science. Vacuum sublimation furnace was invented by our compatriot Lappa-Starzhenetsky. A mining engineer by profession, he nevertheless became the author of a method thanks to which we can enjoy weightless, but nutritious and long-stored products. True, at first (in the twenties of the twentieth century) the method of sublimation was used only in medicine. Dry blood substitutes appeared. Later, pharmaceuticals used this method to produce antibiotics. In the Museum of Cosmonautics, you can see the first freeze-dried foods. These tubes were to be taken by astronauts with them into orbit. In the sixties, freeze-dried curd and other products processed by the new method came to the aid of geologists and polar explorers. The general public got acquainted with innovative technology on the example of coffee “freeze-ride”. Its granules are so similar to ordinary soluble powder, but they cannot be distinguished from natural brewed coffee in taste.
Sublimated curd: what is it?
This is a relatively new product in the Russian food market. The raw materials for it are farm cheese of thirty percent fat content of the highest quality. It is quickly and deeply frozen. Then the smallest grains of ice are dried in a vacuum dryer. The result is a light cream powder. The moisture content in it is about four percent (for comparison: the liquid content in milk powder is 5%). So that the product does not gain moisture from the atmosphere and does not oxidize, it is packaged in a three-layer metallized film. Inside the bag is filled with inert gas, certified by GOST. Upon opening, the gas instantly evaporates. With intact packaging, such a product can be stored for thirteen months. An innovative technology that does not heat the cottage cheese preserves all vitamins and minerals (primarily phosphorus and calcium). Restored with water, the powder regains the structure of fresh natural cottage cheese. It is almost indistinguishable from ordinary fresh cheese.
Is it possible to make a freeze-dried product on my own?
Forced to disappoint you, but no, you can’t. Even if you have a heavy-duty freezer at home, it’s unlikely that you can dry the product so that the ice turns from solid to gaseous. Sublimated cottage cheese can be made by yourselves unless a researcher at a research institute (subject to the availability of a special vacuum oven). So, if you are going on a hike, and want to start every morning with a delicious cottage cheese with sour cream or berries, you need to take care of buying such bags.
Product Recovery
Many consumers do not know whether additional freeze-dried food is needed. It depends on what was subjected to such processing. Producers sublimate both raw meat and ready-to-eat ham. In the first case, the product needs further heat treatment, and in the second - no. What about freeze-dried curd? Since the product is free of moisture, it must be returned to him. Therefore, we fill the cheese with water at room temperature (20-25 degrees) in a ratio of one to three. The usual packaging of the product is freeze-dried curd - 50 g, so you need to take one hundred and fifty milliliters of water per bag. Pour into the powder, stir, wait ten minutes. Fresh farm cottage cheese in front of you. You can pour it with natural sour cream or also sublimated. Such a product is also suitable for heat treatment, including the preparation of cottage cheese pancakes.
Pros of Sublimation
Imagine that you are going on a difficult multi-day trip. What will you take with you? Canned food in heavy tins? Stew in glass jars? Or reluctantly fill your backpack with instant noodles? It is just right to find out what freeze-dried cottage cheese and other products are. Well, if you drag a tent and clothes with shoes on yourself, then at least the provisions can be folded into a small fist. Think, two kilograms were taken to the company for three to four days! And at the halt, you just need to warm up fresh spring water at the stake, pour freeze-dried products on it - and a tasty, full-fledged meal is ready. Fresh vegetables, fruits and cottage cheese are difficult to deliver to the Far North. It often happens that foods freeze. In this case, sublimate is also useful. The processing method allows you to save all the minerals and vitamins contained in the fresh product.
The disadvantages of sublimates
These include a fairly high price. It depends on the complexity of the technology itself, the need to use special equipment. In addition, the raw materials for processing are taken of the highest quality. For example, freeze-dried cottage cheese is the freshest, fat (at least thirty percent) farm cheese that has been deep-frozen and then dried to a powder state. Therefore, it is unlikely that prices for such products will fall in the near future. The high cost (eighty rubles for a fifty-gram bag of cottage cheese) is also caused by scarcity. You can not find sublimates on the shelves of supermarkets. They can be ordered in online stores, on the sites of tourist clubs (for example, "Wanderer"). Perhaps the price of sublimates will seem excessive to you. But you get a kilogram of recovered meat from a 100-gram bag of veal. And it does not need to be cut.
The future belongs to sublimates
Of course, we are still far from the futuristic era when people will eat powders, and the whole process of cooking will consist of squeezing the contents of the tube onto a plate. While there are fresh products, why should we refuse to eat them? We all feel the difference between restored juices and fresh juices . Sublimated curd is also no exception. Let's see what the package tells about its composition. We see that the raw material for the manufacture of the product was cottage cheese, cow cream and ascorbic acid. And although the carbohydrates, fats and proteins in such cottage cheese are balanced, and the energy value is 534 kcal, you should not give preference to it over fresh farm cheese.
How to distinguish a quality freeze-dried product?
Despite the fact that the recovery technology was born in Russia (more precisely, in the USSR), now it does not find a mass consumer in our country. Abroad, more and more people regularly use sublimates in their menu, and not only going on a trip to places far from civilization. In our country, they remain a rarity, almost exotic. Nevertheless, there are domestic manufacturers. Ready meals, berries, meat, dairy products and freeze-dried curd “Gala-Gala” (Moscow Region), “Biorhythm” (Pavlov-Posad), “Galaxy” (Volgograd) are made. You can buy such products in the metropolitan store "Extreme".
Foreign manufacturers
Sublimates are more famous abroad. And therefore there is plenty to choose from. Of the foreign manufacturers of sublimates, the American firms Montine House and Alpin Air have proven themselves well. Of the European brands, we can recommend the Dutch “MX”, the German “Natural High” and “Weiss”, the Norwegian “MRE”. As for the price, it is slightly different from the cost of Russian products. So, for cottage cheese, freeze-dried abroad, they ask not eighty rubles for a bag of 50 grams, but one and a half dollars. The cheapest is the Norwegian brand "MRE". For example, a bucket of freeze-dried boiled meat costs one hundred dollars. This product can be stored for twenty-five years, and it contains fifteen packages of four servings.