Read Time: 3 min -

By cooking whole muscle poultry products in JBT´s Formcook® Contact Cooker and Stein Twindrum™ Spiral Oven you are setup with a perfect combination to deliver maximum product yield and profit to your processing line, a recipe for success.

Oven cooking whole muscle poultry products always poses a challenge. Due to the nature of these products the muscle will contract during cooking and the amount of contraction is not equal or uniform cross the products that are cooked in one batch. Bart Kivits, JBT´s Cooking Applications Manager explains; “The muscle contraction increases the thickness of the product and thicker products need a longer cooking time than thin products. The setup of the oven will be based on reaching the minimum cooking temperature of the thickest product in one batch. Consequentially, thinner products will get overcooked, loose more weight than necessary resulting in reduced cooking yield”.

JBT offers the solution

By using JBT´s Formcook® Contact Cooker to briefly cook the product and set the surface prior entry into JBT´s Stein TwinDrum™ Spiral Oven, the product height ex­pansion gets restricted. “Products that are contact cooked before entering the oven have a much more uniform muscle contraction during the oven cooking, resulting in an even sized product which significantly decrease the number of overcooked products by up to 10% and increase the product yield with 2-4% “says Bart. Additionally, the oven cook time is considerably reduced and deviation in product appearance is reduced considerably. The initial flat product surface caused by contact cooking will disappear again during the oven cooking and the end- product will have a natural shape and home-made appearance after the oven cooking.

Bart continues; “Due to the efficiency of heat transfer by contact cooking the capacity of the oven will be boosted by up to 20%. The pre-cooked product surface will reduce product sticking to the oven belt and oven belt contamination. This allows for longer running hours in between cleaning intervals. Also, the oven belt-marks on the bottom of the product are significantly reduced”. 

Using the Formcook Contact Cooker prior to the Stein TwinDrum Spiral Oven will increase the product yield, boost the capacity, increase product uniformity and the running hours in the oven.

The effect of the combination of Formcook Contact Cooker and TwinDrum Spiral Oven can be demonstrated in one of our Food Technology Centres in Helsingborg in Sweden or near Edinburgh in the UK.

Whole muscle poultry cooking benefits: At-a-glance

Formcook Contact Cooker
  • Produces a pre-cooked surface with reduced product height expansion
  • Capacity up to 6,000 kg per hour
  • Cooking time around 1 minute
  • High yield
  • Accurate process control
  • Proven design, biggest supplier of contact cooking
Stein Twindrum™ Spiral Oven
  • Newest spiral oven cooking technology
  • Produces a consistently cooked product with roasted appearance
  • Capacity up to 4,000 kg per hour
  • Two-zone spiral cooking with individual control of airspeed, temperature and humidity
  • High temperature capability of up to 250 ͦC for all models
  • Minimal temperatures variations across the belt
  • Uniform colour development across the belt

LEARN MORE about JBT´s Cooking solutions