On the use of the Couette Cell technology for large scale production of textured soy-based meat replacers

Abstract

We have demonstrated that application of simple shear flow and heat in a Couette Cell is a scalable process concept that can induce fibrous structural patterns to a granular mixture of plant proteins at mild process conditions. In particular, a Couette Cell device with 7-L capacity was employed for the production of structured soy-based meat replacers. A reduced factorial experimental design was used to find the optimum process conditions between two relevant process parameters (process time and rotation rate), while the process temperature remained constant at 120 °C. Fibre-structured products with high anisotropy indices were produced. Fibrousness is favoured at 30 ± 5 min and 25 ± 5 RPM. The up-scaled Couette Cell can be operated in higher industrial values and yield 30 mm thick meat replacers, which emulate meat. Besides, the study did not reveal any barriers for further upscaling of this concept. The flexibility in design allows production of meat alternative products with sizes that are currently not available, but could have advantages when aiming at replacement of complete muscular parts of animals, for instance, chicken breast or beef meat.