Frozen Food Storage
Many restaurants and other commercial food industries have a huge need for frozen food storage. Commonly, blast freezers can be found in test kitchens, cold storage warehouses, and many other commercial settings. Freezing food is important to maintain food safety and preservation. It is also one way to minimize waste and reduce overall operating cost. In addition to blast freezers, commercial walk in freezers, chest freezers and cold rooms are excellent choices for frozen food storage. Frozen food freezers are an optimal means of preserving everything from ice cream to pot pie.
When considering storage methods for your frozen foods, one must consider the benefits of various freezing methods, and food storage freezers. Throughout the process of freezing, a crystallization of water molecules occurs. The faster the freezing process employed, the smaller and finer the crystals are. For fresh and raw foods this is especially important, as larger crystals do damage on the cellular level of foods, literally poking holes and bursting the cells. This results in texture changes in the final product that can impact the overall quality of the food.
Foods freezing at traditional temperatures of a home freezer might not keep as long or as well as those that are flash frozen or blast frozen. Additionally, blast frozen foods taste fresher and have a noticeably different texture (i.g. creamier ice cream) than their traditionally-frozen counterparts.
Freezing your food storage has the added benefit of inhibiting bacterial growth. If you utilize the correct safety and handling precautions, food preserve by cold room storage techniques are relatively safe to work with. You should never thaw and refreeze foods that have been preserved by this method, however. This will prevent contamination and spoilage risks.
Cold rooms are also a popular choice for storing frozen food within several commercial food industries. These are comprised of a sealed and insulated room that is continually cooled to below-freezing or near-freezing temperatures. This is often used for cooling meat or as a staging area for food preparation and processing. Walk in freezers are also typically used in restaurants.
Blast freezers are high consumers of energy, which make them quite costly to own and operate for the purposes of storing frozen foods. This makes them less common in traditional households. However, blast freezers do come in a wide variety of sizes and price ranges, making it possible for even the home cook to have one for specialized food preparations. They are particularly useful to caterers who wish to prepare bulk amounts of foods and freeze them in manageable portions for quicker prep and usage. Large test kitchens or commercial kitchens may find them useful in packaging and storing batches of foods for later distribution or sale.
Whatever your needs are, DeHart Construction is knowledgeable about all things cold storage, and is happy to advise you on your current cold storage needs. We help design and build all types of frozen food storage facilities. To learn more about frozen food storage for both commercial and home use, contact us at (909) 335-0148.
