Different Types of Food Processing Equipment

Posted on October 30, 2020 by xtxwebmaster

Preparing food is not a simple process, let alone preparing food on an industrial level. With all the processes food must go through, it makes sense there are a plethora of different types of food processing equipment needed. While this list is far from all-encompassing, we hope to offer a brief snapshot of this important topic.

Different Types of Food Processing Equipment

Cleaning

Before food can enter the cooking stages, dirt and other contaminants need to be removed from the ingredients’ surface. For cleaning, many facilities utilize soak tanks, spray cleaners, and ultrasonic cleaners, depending on the size of the ingredient and what needs to be cleaned from it.

Sorting

When it comes to sorting, food must be separated into several categories. For each category, different types of food processing equipment are utilized. For shape, disc separators; for size, sieves; for color, machine vision sorting systems; and for transporting between each stage of sorting, sorting conveyors.

Peeling

Multiple methods can be utilized to peel vegetables and fruit for further processing. There are manual methods such as abrasive or knife peeling which requires machinery with rotating blades. Otherwise, there are less manual methods, such as flame peelers, that use specially equipped furnaces that burn the skin or roots from vegetable surfaces.

Processing

Mixing

As with domestic cooking, mixing food and beverages looks very different depending on the ingredients. Because of this, there is a wide variety of food mixing equipment. For blending liquid ingredients, large agitation tanks usually suffice, but for ingredients that are inherently hard to blend, emulsifiers may be utilized. For dough, a horizontal dough mixer is one of the more common solutions. For foods that involve only solid ingredients, drum blenders or diffusive and connective mixers may be used.

Heat

Depending on how heat needs to be applied, different types of machinery will be utilized. For instance, when it comes to baking, direct heating ovens may be preferred for items requiring high heat, but indirect heating ovens may be better suited for food that requiring steady heat. For frying, continuous fryers or batch fryers may be used depending on company needs and speed of production.

Packaging

From the outside, packaging may seem like the simplest part of a food processing operation, but it still requires several steps and pieces of machinery. Along with volumetric or gross weight fillers that place food into containers, sealing and steaming equipment is needed for consumer safe packaging. Scales are needed to confirm weight and printers are needed to create labels.

Whatever stage of the food processing operation you’re looking at, Cedarstone is equipped to handle your stainless steel processing equipment needs.