Before your taste buds decide whether a forkful of food is savory sweet, sour, or salty, your first impression is decided by its texture. If you get that wrong, the flavor will not matter. Food manufacturers often focus on sourcing the right ingredients to ensure appetizing flavor profiles but do not focus on the formulation. Managing the formulation and giving the right feel is just as important as the other major considerations that you take as a manufacturer in the early stages of product development.
Here are the top four formulation tips that will help you achieve the desired consistency in dairy.
1. Consider Texture Before The Flavor
Most scientists agree that it’s easy to develop flavor profiles than it is to ensure the ideal mouthfeel and texture, but first impression matters in food as well and if the food texture looks unappetizing, your product sales will never get off the ground.
2. Control Production Methods
Sourcing the right ingredients, shear, combination of equipment, ingredient temperature, and flow is a crucial step in ensuring the long-term performance of a product. Excessive high vortex shear may lead to a breakdown in viscosity of dairy foods, and adding powdered ingredients too quickly can also result in improper hydration.
Likewise, inadequate or excessive thermal settings can lead to clumping. In some particular formulations containing high protein, contents may negatively impact solubility and, when heated, become more viscous.
To determine proper production methods, its recommended to collaborate with your ingredient suppliers.
3. Choose Ingredients Wisely
Ultimately, the ingredients you choose play a major role in your food production process. You can change the mixing speed on a piece of equipment or the temperature, but if an ingredient is sub-par and doesn’t perform well it will not matter how good your equipment and production methods are.
4. Consider Real Dairy Alternatives
Some food manufacturers are challenged with viscosity breakdowns, decreasing costs by reducing, and ultimately replacing, high-cost dairy ingredients in their formulations. The real challenge is that many emulsifiers and thickeners turn out to be artificial ingredients, which have substantially fallen out of favor with consumers.
Using functional ingredients such as natural flavors in combination with protein can help to replace some traditional hydrocolloid textures in dairy foods. Whey proteins are another cost-effective option that delivers desired qualities. It maintains water-holding capabilities and can withstand most processing environments. It also has a long shelf life and does not break down, unlike many other alternative food ingredients.
Final Thoughts
Consumers and food manufacturers want each product to maintain the same consistency from the moment the product leaves the industry to the moment it hits the customer’s refrigerator or pantry, so always choose the right suppliers that not just help in the manufacturing process but also help in satisfying your customers.