Every food product is different and requires different freezing techniques in order to achieve the best freezing results. The same is true for asparagus, a high value product, where pre-processing techniques are extremely important for a quality frozen product.
Asparagus is quite a particular product to freeze, which is why, in comparison to other food products, where you want the air to move the product and create a complete fluidization for IQF asparagus - the air circulating inside the IQF tunnel freezer - needs to be set in such a way that the product is not moving at all. Also, the loading of the asparagus should be in the cross direction of the belt movement, in order to avoid the risk of the product rolling out to the bed side. Processors can load as much product as possible as long as there is still airflow going through the asparagus pieces.
“Consumers are willing to pay more for premium quality healthy food products that have natural appearance, shape, color, taste and texture, and the OctoFrost Frozen IQF asparagus is just that. The OctoFrost™ IQF tunnel freezer is the most innovative IQF tunnel on the market, having the best results with asparagus. Besides a good quality product with natural appearance that can be sold at a premium price, asparagus processors will also have a higher yield of the production, leading to more product to sell,” shared Carmen Popescu from Octofrost.
“Traditional IQF freezers offer a two-belt solution for the processing of asparagus which breaks the tips of the product and the asparagus comes out unsorted. This is a typical issue with the two-belt solution which requires more people at the outfeed to sort the asparagus. The OctoFrost™ requires limited manual handling since the product is placed in good order into the freezer and comes out in the same order at the outfeed.”
