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Blanching of Foods

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Blanching of Foods
José I. Reyes De Corcuera
Ralph P. Cavalieri
Joseph R. Powers
Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION inactivate enzymes that cause the development of off-

flavors and off-colors during frozen storage. Some
Blanching is a unit operation prior to freezing, canning, or exceptions include onions, leeks, and peppers because
drying in which fruits or vegetables are heated for the they lose flavor and color on blanching. Blanching
purpose of inactivating enzymes; modifying texture; removes trapped air (e.g., in broccoli florets) and
preserving color, flavor, and nutritional value; and metabolic gases within vegetable cells and replaces them
removing trapped air. Hot water and steam are the most with water, forming a semicontinuous water phase that
commonly used heating media for blanching in industry, favors a more uniform crystal growth during freezing. Gas
but microwave and hot gas blanching have also been removal is the main benefit of blanching before canning
studied. Different hot water and steam blanchers have because it allows easier can fill, reduces strain on can
been designed to improve product quality, increase yield, during heating, and reduces can corrosion. Although, in
and facilitate processing of products with different this case, enzyme inactivation also takes place, it is not
thermal properties and geometries. More recently, energy relevant because any remaining activity is destroyed on
conservation and waste reduction have driven further retorting.[2] Blanching facilitates peeling and dicing, and
improvement of equipment design. Although blanching is also accompanied by microbial load reduction. Fruits
seems a simple operation, heat transfer to a conveyed bed are usually not blanched, or blanched under mild (low
of product and its effects on product properties are very temperature) conditions prior to freezing because blanch-
difficult to accurately model with predictive mathematics. ing produces undesirable texture changes. Before drying,
Processing conditions are usually set up to inactivate fruits and vegetables are sometimes blanched.[3] After
enzymes, but other quality parameters, such as color and blanching, vegetables are quickly chilled by spraying with
texture, are commonly monitored. For a given product, cold water, or by conveying them to a flume of cold water
typically mass flow rate is fixed, temperature is measured, that often serves to transport them to the next part of the
and heating media flow rate is adjusted to ensure that the process. Blowing cold dry air has also been used to take
temperature is kept at the set point. advantage of evaporative cooling, using the water adhered
The objective of this article is to review blanching to the surface of the product.
principles and equipment, effects of blanching on
product quality, blanching indicators, and energy and
waste considerations. Water Blanching

Water blanching is performed in hot water at temperatures

ranging typically from 70°C to 100°C. However, low-
PRINCIPLES AND EQUIPMENT temperature long-time (LTLT) blanching and combina-
tions of LTLT with high-temperature short-time (HTST)
The design of blanching systems depends on the product, blanching have also been studied.[3–5] Water blanching
the process following it, and the final use of the product. usually results in a more uniform treatment, allowing
Blanching is carried out as a pretreatment for freezing, processing at lower temperatures. There are water
canning, and drying. In 2003, 9.8 and 13.8 million metric blanchers that use a screw or a chain conveyor to transport
tons of vegetables for freezing and canning, respectively, the product inside the tank, where hot water is added.
were produced in the United States with a total farmgate Others use a rotary drum to immerse and convey the
value of US$1.4 billion. Studies on the effects of product. Water is usually heated indirectly with steam in a
blanching as a pretreatment for freezing date back to the heat exchanger; therefore steam quality does not need to
late 1920s and early 1930s, and have been reviewed.[1] be ‘‘food-grade.’’ Water blanching requires longer
Most vegetables are blanched prior to freezing to processing times, results in increased leaching of minerals

Encyclopedia of Agricultural, Food, and Biological Engineering 1

DOI: 10.1081/E-EAFE-120030417
Copyright D 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All rights reserved.
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2 Blanching of Foods

and nutrients such as vitamins, and produces effluents surface and the center of the product, larger products or
with large biological oxygen demand (BOD). pieces of product can be ‘‘overblanched’’ near the surface
and ‘‘underblanched’’ at the center. To increase heat
Steam Blanching transfer efficiency, forced convection blanchers have been
designed. These blanchers are made of nested chambers
In steam blanchers, a product is transported by a chain or that allow recirculating steam with a fan that interconnects
belt conveyor through a chamber where ‘‘food-grade’’ both chambers. The fan forces the flow of steam through
steam at approximately 100°C is directly injected. Usually a packed bed of product conveyed by a mesh belt. This
temperature in the headspace is measured and the flow technology allows higher product bed depths and higher
rate of steam is controlled. Steam blanching is usually product throughput. Figure 1 shows a picture and a
used for cut and small products, and requires less time schematic of the cross section of a forced convection
than water blanching because the heat transfer coefficient blancher. Another technology, individual quick blanching
of condensing steam is greater than that of hot water (refer (IQB), was developed to minimize product treatment
to the articles ‘‘Convection Heat Transfer in Foods’’ and nonuniformities. In IQB, a single layer of product is
‘‘Convective Heat Transfer Coefficients’’). However, conveyed through the steam chamber and each ‘‘individ-
because of the high-temperature gradients between the ual’’ piece of product immediately enters in contact with
the steam.
Steam blanching is more energy-efficient and produces
lower BOD and hydraulic loads than water blanching.
In addition, nutrient leaching is reduced compared to
water blanching.

Microwave Blanching

Studies on radiofrequency and microwave vegetable

blanching date back to the 1940s.[1] Among the first
important findings were retention of ascorbic acid and
carotene, and very short processing time compared to
conventional water or steam blanching. These early
studies used batch ovens, making the cooling step
difficult. Continuous ovens developed later overcame that
issue. However, most studies on microwave blanching
have been carried out using commercially available home
microwave ovens. These studies are difficult to compare
due to the variability in equipment performance and are
difficult to extrapolate to industrial conditions. Recent
studies used different products and improved instrumen-
tation such as fiber optic temperature probes and infrared
imaging to further demonstrate heat penetration and
efficacy of the technology. Microwave technology has
been combined with water blanching to further reduce
heating time.[6,7] Despite the tremendous potential of
microwave blanching to improve product quality and
minimize waste production, industrial implementation
may take several years for several reasons:

In general, the use of microwave ovens in industry is

limited. At present, high-value products are the most
likely users for this technology.
Fig. 1 Turbo-Flo1 forced convection steam blancher (A); Once it has shown its value, it might draw the freezing and
(B) schematic representation of the transversal section. (Cour- canning industry. Substitution of existing water or
tesy of Key Technology, Inc.) (View this art in color at www. steam blanchers is unlikely to occur. The vegetable
dekker.com.) industry would be reluctant to replace pieces of
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Blanching of Foods 3

equipment before full depreciation and especially if Cooling Lag Constants,’’ ‘‘Thermal Conductivity of
their market niche is stable. Foods,’’ and ‘‘Convective Heat Transfer Coefficients’’).
Finally, it remains to be shown that the shorter processing Blanchers are designed to handle a variety of products by
times of microwave ovens will result in reduced adjusting feed rate.
operating costs and higher value products, thereby Blanching produces approximately 40% of total plant
compensating for equipment cost. effluent BOD in vegetable processing. Each vegetable
produces different amounts of wastes because different
products have different compositions, shapes, and
Gas Blanching surface areas. In addition, organic matter diffuses at
different rates depending on the product. For example,
Hot gas blanching using combustion of flue gases with leaching is faster in cut product through the cut sections
addition of steam to increase humidity and prevent prod- than in wholesome products such as peas or lima beans
uct dehydration has been studied. This type of blanching where a membrane acts as a diffusion barrier. To reduce
has the advantage of reducing waste production, is BOD and hydraulic waste loads, in many cases, water
comparable to conventional blanching with respect to blanchers have been substituted by steam blanchers.
nutrient retention, but often results in product weight loss. When water blanching is required, it has been recom-
This approach is not currently used in industry and needs mended to recirculate water streams to saturate them,
further research.[2] thus preventing further leaching of organic matter,
resulting in an overall decrease in BOD and a potential
increase in nutrient retention. Microwave blanching may
play an important role in further reducing BOD load, but
ENERGY AND WASTE CONSIDERATIONS
as mentioned above, this technology has not reached
industrial applications for blanching and its energy
In the freezing industry, blanching is the operation with
efficiency relative to conventional blanching needs to
the second largest energy consumption after freezing
be demonstrated.
itself. The energy balance for a steam blancher can be
written as follows:

QH ¼ WP ðCP DTÞ þ QL ð1Þ

EFFECTS ON FOOD QUALITY AND
QH
WS ¼ ð2Þ BLANCHING INDICATORS
l
where QH is the heat supplied to the blancher, WP is the Flavor, texture, and color are quality parameters that are
mass feed rate of the product to the blancher, CP is the typically assessed for fresh products, immediately after
heat capacity of the product, DT is the difference between blanching and after a given storage time. These studies
the raw vegetables and the blanching temperature, and QL allow determining the efficacy of the process in retaining
represents energy losses. WS is the mass flow rate of steam or improving food quality and depend on each process. As
and l is the heat of vaporization of steam. In an ideal discussed above, food quality is greatly affected by the
blancher, QL = 0; assuming that CP 4.18 kJ kg 1 K 1 type and extent of blanching. Mathematical equations
and l = 2330 kJ kg 1, steam requirements would be describing the effects of thermal treatments on the quality
134 kg ton 1 vegetables.[8] Heat losses can be estimated of foods are presented in the articles ‘‘Decimal Reduction
from the difference between the actual steam consumption Times,’’ ‘‘Activation Energy in Thermal Process Calcu-
and this proposed ideal estimate. Decrease in energy lations,’’ and ‘‘Thermal Resistance Constant and Q10’’ in
losses has been performed by insulating blancher walls this encyclopedia. A summary of the quality parameters
and improving blancher seals. However, in steam commonly used to evaluate the effects of blanching is
blanchers, steam loss through product inlet and outlet presented below.
ports is still a problem. Product retention time at a
constant product feed rate (and therefore equipment size)
is determined by the rate of heat transfer from the heating Flavor
medium to the product. The rate of heat transfer depends
on the thermal conductivity of the product, heat transfer Blanching indirectly and directly affects the flavor of
coefficient, and temperatures gradients between the many products by inactivation of enzymes responsible
heating medium and the product (refer to Eqs. 1 and 3 for off-flavor development. The most notable is li-
in the articles entitled ‘‘Heat Transfer,’’ ‘‘Heating and poxygenase (LOX) in several vegetables.[9,10] Sometimes
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4 Blanching of Foods

blanching increases flavor retention, and sometimes it for many vegetables such as corn, peas, and green beans,
removes undesirable bitter flavors from the product. LOX, a less heat-resistant enzyme, was found to be the
Headspace volatiles assayed mostly by gas chromatog- enzyme responsible for the development of off-fla-
raphy have been correlated to flavor attributes defined in vors.[9,10,13] Although food processors are aware of this,
sensory panels. it is only recently that some rapid methods to measure
LOX activity have been developed.[14,15]
Texture

Blanching can result in undesirable softening of vegetable CONCLUSION

tissues. However, calcium can be added to reduce the
softening.[11] A combination of low-temperature blanch- Blanching is an old and well-established practice in the
ing and calcium addition has also been shown to be food industry. Early technological improvements focused
effective in firming canned vegetables.[4] The latter is due on increasing product quality. Later, process efficiency in
to the activity of pectin methyl esterase that produces terms of product throughput, energy efficiency, and waste
pectin with a reduced degree of methylation that readily effluent reduction has been the main concern. Targeting
interacts wih calcium. Texture assessment of the effects of the right enzyme indicator would reduce blanching time
blanching includes sensory characterization of firmness, and tackle all these priorities: improving product quality
crispness, and crunchiness, and instrumental measure- (increasing retention of nutrients and other freshlike
ments such as cutting energy and maximum shear force quality attributes), reducing energy consumption, and
(refer to an article entitled ‘‘Food Texture’’). reducing waste production. However, implementation of
this requires modification of existing equipment to allow
Color either faster product conveying or shorter pieces of
equipment. Furthermore, food processors and their
Blanching can have both direct and indirect effects on customers have been using long-established United States
color. The former is exemplified by the destruction of Department of Agriculture guidelines that suggest the
pigments, such as chlorophyll, by heat. A good example of use of catalase or peroxidase as indicators. Therefore
an indirect effect is in potato processing, in which the there is still room for improvement of an apparently
reducing sugar content can be adjusted via water simple technology.
blanching, affecting color development during later, more
intensive heating steps where the Maillard reaction takes
place.[12] Color assessment in the food industry is REFERENCES
commonly performed visually by comparison to stan-
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2. Downing, D.L. Canning Operations. In A Complete Course
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Blanching of Foods 5

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