Fish Products and Byproducts Technology

Unit 13 - Diversified fish products/ value addition

13.3. Imitation products
Several value added imitation products are made from surimi (water washed mince). These include imitation of shrimp lobster tails breaded scallops, imitation breaded crab claws, sushi products, sushi sticks, imitation crab shreds, minced sticks, filament sticks and others. These seafood analogs possess the accepted texture, flavour and appearance of the authentic products. For production of seafood analogs, the surimi blocks are chopped to create a paste. The paste is combined usually with additional amounts of cryoprotectants and other additives such as salt, soy protein, starch, egg white, alginate etc to promote cohesion among the protein molecules and thereby to improve the texture and flavour of the finished product. For chopping the frozen blocks, it is ideal to use a vacuum mixer, which helps to disintegrate the mince and make the proteins available for binding the ingredients. A vacuum mixer also removes any air that could be introduced in the chopped product, which can result in uneven heating during cooking. The chopped paste is extruded as a flat sheet (approximately 1-2 mm thick) molded into desired shapes and set by placing on a cooking belt where it is heated. Heating is done at 90-93ºC for 30- 100 sec on a stainless steel belt, drum. Final texture is developed during thermal pasteurization, which is performed after bundling, cutting and packaging. The pasteurization step eliminates bacterial pathogens that might grow during the storage of the product. Generally surimi seafood should be cooled from 60 to 21.1ºC or below within 2 h and to 4.4ºC or below within 4h and should be held at 4.4ºC or below at all times during storage and distribution.