What is a freeze cottage cheese? How to make sublimated cottage cheese?

The term "sublimation" is known to us from the field of psychoanalysis. But it turns out that cooking also took him into service. What is the process of sublimation of products? You will learn about this in our article. We will also consider the pros and cons of products subjected to this high-tech processing. Today there is freeze-dried cottage cheese, meat, fruit, butter, cereals and even vodka. There are ready meals. Is their use safe for health? Can I include freeze-dried foods in baby food? Nutritionists continue to break spears on this. Of course, it is difficult to imagine a feast without the usual dishes, and the use of tubes. But in a hike or in situations where ordinary products become inaccessible, sublimates are very useful. Let's consider in more detail this kind of processing on an example of cottage cheese. After all, this product, as is known, serves as a source of calcium and phosphorus for our body.

The dreams of mankind about long-term storage of products

Even at the dawn of human civilization, people racked their brains how to save longer hunting trophies. At the site of the sites of primitive people, archeologists find special pits that served as precursors of modern cellars. The ice age contributed to the preservation of food, but nevertheless, not all products could be stored for as long as we would like. Later they began to smoke and salt meat, and vegetables - pickled and canned. But with the fermented milk products the situation was different. Cottage cheese is good only in the first two days, and even when stored in a chill. Then it requires heat treatment. It can be used for dumplings or cheese cakes, in a casserole. But here on the stage there was a sublimated cottage cheese. After all, this is what we are talking about right now.

What is the focus?

The method of sublimation consists in deep freezing of the product and its subsequent drying. As a result, the liquid, enclosed in meat or cheese, turns into ice. Vacuum drying is designed to evaporate it. In this case, the ice passes into a gaseous state, bypassing the liquid state. That is, freeze-dried apples and pears are radically different from dried fruits. With the first method of treatment, all the vitamins are preserved, their dried fruits lose their fruit. Well, cottage cheese is sublimated - what is it? The processing process remains the same. The fresh farmer cottage cheese is deeply frozen, and then the small crystals of ice are dried. As a result, the product becomes five times lighter. To use such cheese for food, it must be refilled with moisture. But in spite of the fact that the process of converting a vacuum package into a full-fledged product resembles the steaming of "Mivin" noodles, do not compare sublimated cottage cheese with this nutritious but useless for health product.

History of the invention method

Not many people know that Russia has also contributed to the development of science here. Vacuum-sublimation furnace invented by our compatriot Lappa-Starzhenetsky. A mining engineer by profession, he nevertheless became the author of a method, through which we can enjoy weightless, but nutritious and long-lasting products. True, at first (in the twenties of the twentieth century) the method of sublimation was applied only in medicine. There were dry blood substitutes. Later, pharmaceutics used this method to produce antibiotics. In the Museum of Astronautics you can see the first freeze-dried food products. These tubes were to be taken into orbit by astronauts. In the sixties sublimed cottage cheese and other products processed by the new method came to the aid of geologists and polar explorers. The general public got acquainted with innovative technology using the example of frieze-drier coffee. Its granules are so similar to the usual soluble powder, but its taste can not be distinguished from the natural brewed coffee.

Cottage cheese sublimated: what is it?

This is a relatively new product on the Russian food market. The raw material for it is a cottage cheese with a 30% fat content of the highest quality. It is quickly and deeply frozen. Then the smallest grains of ice are dried in vacuum drying. The result is a powder of light cream color. The moisture content in it is about four percent (for comparison: the liquid content in dry milk is 5%). To ensure that the product does not collect moisture from the atmosphere and does not oxidize, it is packed in a three-layer metallized film. From inside the bag is filled with inert gas, certified by GOST. At the opening, the gas instantly evaporates. With undamaged packaging, this product can be stored for thirteen months. Innovative technology that does not subject the cheese to heat treatment preserves all vitamins and trace elements (primarily phosphorus and calcium). Restored with water, the powder regains the structure of fresh natural cottage cheese. It almost does not differ from the usual fresh cheese.

Can I make a freeze product myself?

Forced to disappoint you, but no, you can not. Even in the presence of a house of a superpower freezer, the product is dried so that the ice from the solid state passes into gaseous, you are unlikely to succeed. Sublimated cottage cheese can be made independently only by a research fellow at the Research Institute (provided there is a special vacuum oven). So, if you are going on a hike, and want to start every morning with a delicious cottage cheese with sour cream or berries, you need to take care of buying such bags.

Product Recovery

Many consumers do not know whether it is necessary to prepare sublimated food in addition. It depends on what was processed. Manufacturers sublimate both raw meat and ready-to-eat ham. In the first case the product needs further heat treatment, but in the second case it does not. And what about freeze-dried cottage cheese? Since the product is devoid of moisture, it must be returned to it. Therefore, we pour the cheese with water at room temperature (20-25 degrees) in a ratio of one to three. The usual packaging of the product is sublimated curd - 50 g, so you need to take a hundred and fifty milliliters of water on the bag. Pour into the powder, stir, wait ten minutes. Fresh cottage cheese in front of you. You can pour it with sour cream, natural or also sublimated. This product is suitable for heat treatment, including the preparation of cheese cakes.

Pros of sublimation

Imagine that you are going to a difficult many days trip. What kind of food will you take with you? Canned food in heavy tins? Stewed in glass jars? Or, reluctantly, you will fill a backpack of instant noodles? It's time to find out what sublimated cottage cheese and other products are. If you carry a tent and clothes with shoes on your back, then at least the provisions can be put in a small kuleček. Think, two kilograms of food for the company for three or four days! And on a halt it is only necessary to warm fresh spring water on the fire, to fill it with freeze-dried products - and a tasty, high-grade meal is ready. Fresh vegetables, fruits and cottage cheese are difficult to deliver to the Far North. It often happens that the products freeze. In this case, too, useful sublimat. The method of treatment allows you to save all the minerals and vitamins contained in the fresh product.

Disadvantages of sublimates

To them it is necessary to carry a fairly high price. It depends on the complexity of the technology itself, the need to use special equipment. In addition, the raw materials for processing are of the highest quality. For example, freeze-cottage cheese is the freshest, fatty (no less than thirty percent) farm cheese that has been deep frozen and then dried to a powdery state. Therefore, it is unlikely that in the near future prices for such products will fall. High cost (eighty rubles for a fifty-gram packet of cottage cheese) also causes a shortage. Sublimates can not be found on supermarket shelves. They can be ordered in online stores, on the sites of tourist clubs (for example, "Wanderer"). Perhaps the price of sublimates will seem excessive to you. But after all, from a hundredgram bag of veal you get a kilogram of reconstituted meat. And it does not need to be cut.

The future is beyond sublimates

Of course, we are still far from the futuristic era when people will eat powders, and the whole process of cooking will consist in squeezing the contents of the tube onto a plate. While there are fresh products, why should we abandon their use? We all feel the difference between the restored juices and fresh. Curd sublimated is also no exception. Let's see what the packaging will tell about its composition. We see that the raw material for the product was cottage cheese, cream cow and ascorbic acid. And although the carbohydrates, fats and proteins in this cottage cheese are balanced, and the energy value is 534 kcal, do not give preference to it in front of fresh farm cheese.

How to distinguish a quality freeze-dried product?

Despite the fact that the technology of recovery was born in Russia (more precisely, in the USSR), now it does not find a mass consumer in our country. Abroad, more and more people regularly use sublimats in their menu, and not only going on a trip to places far from civilization. At us they remain a rarity, almost exotic. Nevertheless, there are domestic producers. They make ready meals, berries, meat, dairy products and freeze-dried cottage cheese "Gala-Gala" (Moscow region), "Biorhythm" (Pavlov-Posad), "Galaxy" (Volgograd). Buy these products can be in the capital store "Extreme".

Foreign producers

Abroad, sublimates are more famous. So there is a lot to choose from. Of the foreign manufacturers of sublimates, the American firms Montaine House and Alpin Air are well established. Of the European brands, you can recommend the Dutch "MX", the German "Natural High" and "Weiss", the Norwegian "MRE". As for the price, it is slightly different from the cost of Russian products. So, for cottage cheese, sublimated abroad, ask not eighty rubles for a bag of 50 grams, and one and a half dollars. The cheapest is the Norwegian brand "MRE". For example, a pail of freeze-dried boiled meat costs one hundred dollars. These products can be stored for twenty-five years, and in it fifteen packs of four servings.