Baking & Snack - February 2010 - 79

SNACK FOOD PROCESSING

To help create new products and to improve its efficiencies, Rudolph Foods invested
in new equipment and technology within the
past few years and is also "in the early stages
of investigating some proprietary technologies," according to Mr. Singleton.
Suppliers continue to introduce new systems for manufacturing a variety of salty
snacks from potato chips to extruded snacks
to pellet products.
POTATO CHIPS. When making potato
chips, one of the first steps is slicing the potatoes. Next, excess starch needs to be washed
off the chip slice to reduce starch buildup
in the fryer and prevent slices from sticking
together. PPM Technologies, Newberg, OR,
offers a slice washer that uses 40% less fresh
water and lowers the content of starches and protein
in the oil, thus reducing downtime for sanitation and
improving the quality of fried products.
Trevor Howard, vice-president of EMEA, PPM Technologies, said the slice washer and process are becoming even more important because of society's "green"
movement. "The 3-step process uses fresh water at the
final rinse stage, then recycles filtered water for drum
washing and slicer infeed to reduce the fresh water
consumption rate," he explained. "Recently, we have
even had customers replace existing equipment with
the PPM Slice Washer."
The slice washer also reduces breakage through gentle
handling and is available in variety of sizes.
After slicing, the potatoes are fried. Kettle chipsare
a growing segment in the potato chip market. "Regular style potato chips have not been growing nearly as
fast as kettle chips," said Don Giles, director of sales for
snack processing, Heat and Control, Hayward, CA. To
make kettle-style chips, companies have generally used
batch fryers, which are much lower capacity, producing
between 200 to 400 lbs of chips per hour per kettle. To
meet necessary production rates, companies have installed multiple kettles, according to Mr. Giles, noting
that some snack manufacturers have put in as many as
20 batch kettles in a plant.
The problem is that batch systems are not as efficient as continuous systems, and after several years of
development, Heat and Control introduced its Universal Potato Chip (UPC) system that is capable of making a kettle chip on a continuous basis. "It is more fuel
efficient than batch systems," Mr. Giles said. "It takes
up significantly less floor space. Product uniformity is
better, and it's just a win all the way around. It also is versatile
that it can make kettle-style potato chips, regular potato chips
or something in between, which is called a home-style chip."

BAKING & SNACK / February 2010

▲ To remove some of the excess oil from kettle-cooked potato chips, manufacturers can use a heated centrifuge that spins chips in a perforated basket.
HEAT AND CONTROL

UPC uses independent fryer modules integrated into
one continuous frying system, and manufacturers are
able to adjust the temperature, dwell time and oil flow
in each module to produce chips with specific textures,
moisture and color qualities. A PLC stores multiple recipes so product changeovers can be done in minutes, and
the cooking oil is continuously filtered in each module
for superior product quality. The system processes up to
1,800 lb of chips per hour.
REMOVING OIL. Heat and Control also developed heated and non-heated centrifuge systems to quickly remove
surface oil from snacks. Its Automatic Heated Centrifuge
(AHC) is specifically designed for removing oil from
kettle-style potato chips, according to Mr. Giles.
"Typically batch-cooked potato chips have 29 to
30% finished oil content, and with an Automatic
Heated Centrifuge, you can get down to below 22%
- you can go as low as 18 to 19%," he said. The two
main benefits of removing the oil from the chips are
the finished chips do not have as many calories because the oil or fat has been decreased. Second, the
chips have more potato flavor, according to Mr. Giles.
Rather than being 30% fat and 70% potato solids, now
you have a product that is 80% potato solids, which
results in a better potato flavor, he said.
The other centrifuge system offered by Heat and Control is a continuous centrifuge designed for pellet products. "A continuous centrifuge is a unique piece of equipment," Mr. Giles said.
Heat and Control's non-heated centrifuge receives
cooked products from the pellet popper and extracts between 6 to 8% oil from the products, so if a

Baking & Snack - February 2010

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