Reevaluation of Thermal Food Processes in Order to Increase Food Safety and Quality: Frying, Drying, Salting, Smoking

Re‐evaluation of food processes seems to be a useful effort regarding current safety, environmental, and quality concerns in the food industry. Reverse engineering seems to be one of the ways to perform such a goal. There are only a few sets of applications with respect to food. Thermal unit operations are a good subject for this purpose. For baking and frying, for example, questions have arisen about acrylamide in heated foods. Some other examples lie with drying operations where a compromise must be found between drying ability and intensity and final food quality. Recently, we have developed a case study for a meat product produced in tropical countries. Traditional techniques for processing meat there usually involve salting, drying, and/or smoking. There is a wide range of beef products, such as charqui and carne‐de‐sol in South America, nham in Southeast Asia, and biltong in South Africa. Little is known of the traditional processing of pork other than the Nigerian product unam inung. Traditional processes for making boucané, a salted/dried/smoked pork belly product from Ré union Island, has not been the focus of any other scientific studies to date. Pork meat is salted and in the smoking oven, the boucan, smoke and heat from the hearth slowly cook the meat hanging over the fire. The product is stored beside the oven where smoke keeps flies away and the heat prevents moisture uptake by the product during the rainy season.