| By :
Stewart Wrighter
To make some food easy to process and consume, you need to cut, chop, slice, mince or pulp it. For this purpose, you will need to have fixed blade knives which are quite different from hunting knives. With the appropriate tool, you can reduce the size of the food and thus facilitate easy consumption. Most of these operations are applied in food industry. For instance, in processing meat, fruits and vegetables and other different crops, you will need to employ these processes. The equipment used for these processes are well adapted for the product you are processing. It all goes down to the size of operation. a) Cutting As mentioned earlier cutting like other such procedures is meant for size reduction of various food items. In meat processing, it is employed after slaughtering in order to split carcasses and get rid of unnecessary appendages along with excess fat or bones. After thorough cutting with electrically operated equipment, the meat is further processed into bacon, ham or sausage whereas, for potato cutting to make French fries, hydro cutters are used. In this, the potatoes are moved over the fixed blades at high speeds to achieve cutting. b) Slicing In slicing, standard chunks of material can be obtained. Slicing gear comprises of rotating blades which shreds food as it passes underneath. At times, the material is hard-pressed against blades with the help of centrifugal force. In some cases, like for wedging meat stuff, the material is kept in place as it moves across the blade. In sugar industry "cossettes" are made by slicing of sugar beets. An alternative to slicing is dicing which is meant specifically for fruits and vegetables. c) Chopping Several products need the reduction of materials into minute particles. Ideally, this can be done by chopping. The technique can be applied to all types of food like meat, fruits and vegetables. You need to place the food in a rotating bowl. The food comes in contact with high-speed rotating blades. That is how you can have finely chopped meat that can be used for making products like sausages. The chopping can be stopped according to the amount of mincing required. d) Mincing Mincing is chiefly employed for the decrease in size and to bring about homogenization of meat. For this, a meat grinder will mince out the meat. The grinder comprises of screw press having a cutting plate as an outlet. In this process, you can have both cutting along with extrusion of meat. e) Pulping Pulping is the same as mincing with the only difference that the former process was solely for meat whereas this one is for fruits. In pulping, a movable tough surface first breaks the fruit and then squeezes the pulp giving rise to a homogenized mass. At times, this process is also meant for extraction of juice from fruits. f) Pressing This process is mainly applied to freshly harvested grapes. The idea here is to extract the juice. As for the industrial application of the process, it is applied for wine production alongside manufacturing other alcoholic drinks.
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