At Besser Vacuum, we have dedicated over 25 years to the design and production of professional technologies for food excellence and sustainability: complete solutions that allow industry professionals to fully value the potential of their products and raw materials. Our mission, in fact, is to make the food industry and catering sectors more sustainable through better food preservation, enhancing its organoleptic qualities, and reducing waste. This commitment to innovation has guided us towards our latest achievement – Sonicook, a machine that utilizes ultrasonic technology to innovate food treatment.
Why ultrasound technology?
It’s not just any method, but the most rigorously researched and swiftly adopted technique in food treatment. Over the past decade, scientific studies into its food applications have exploded and with each passing month we’re uncovering game-changing benefits – like prolonging food preservation, extracting essences and essential oils, accelerating meat aging, ripening fruit, aging wine and many more, all in a fraction of the time typically required.
Sonicook is our solution to bring this high-level technology directly into professional kitchens; it’s a versatile machine designed for chefs and bartenders, to meet their specific needs. With Sonicook, they can not only experiment more but also stimulate their creativity, utilizing a technology that was previously confined to laboratories and large food industries. This opens new avenues for culinary innovation, transforming the way food is prepared and used.
A breakthrough for Chefs and Bartenders
Sonicook allows professional kitchens to achieve results that until now were only possible in industrial settings, with specifically designed machines. The benefits are numerous and open up a vast array of effects and combinations; the machine can sonicate food in both hot or cold, at reduced or full power, it can also simply serve as a temperature-controlled tank for sous-vide cooking, and it allows to monitor the parameters of time, temperature and ultrasounds power for a perfect replication.
With Sonicook you can obtain:
- Meat and fish tenderization and flavour enhancement, with a result similar to aging but without wastes and food weight loss
- Extraction of essential oils into a liquid (alcohol, oil, water)
- Initiation of fermentation and maturation processes, with enzyme activation
- Softening of hard and fibrous foods like vegetables
- Food sanitization, increasing its shelf-life
Why ultrasounds?
Ultrasounds are a form of energy generated by mechanical vibrations with frequencies higher than the human auditory field, typically above 20 kHz. An early use of ultrasonics in food treatment dates back to the 1950s, for the extraction of juice from citrus fruits. Since then, ultrasonics have been used for a wide variety of applications in food treatment, including the extraction of bioactive compounds, modification of food structure, and improvement of food process efficiency. This technology can be used for various purposes in food treatment, including activation or deactivation of enzymes, mixing and homogenization, emulsification, dispersion, preservation and stabilization, dissolution and crystallization, hydrogenation, meat tenderizing, maturation, oxidation, and as an adjuvant for solid-liquid extraction for maceration purposes.
How does Sonicook work?
Sonicook is equipped with six powerful ultrasound transducers that propagate ultrasound energy within the treatment tank, along with heating resistances. The dual processes of sonication and heating are effortlessly managed and regulated via the machine’s front panel, ensuring precision and repeatability in every operation.
The sonication process can occur either in a hot, thanks to the integrated resistors, or in a cold environment, by manually maintaining the water’s temperature down. In both cases, the temperature is easily monitored and controlled via the integrated thermometer and alerts that can be set, ensuring optimal process control.
How does the sonication process work?
When high-power ultrasound waves are applied to food, it induces a series of mechanical and chemical effects that influence the food’s quality, safety, and characteristics.
The mechanical effects of ultrasound on food primarily include cavitation and micro-streaming:
- Cavitation: This is the most significant mechanical effect of ultrasound. Cavitation refers to the formation, growth, and implosive collapse of bubbles in a liquid. These bubbles are created due to the low-pressure phase following each propagation of the ultrasonic wave, and they collapse or implode during the high-pressure phase. When these bubbles collapse, they generate shock waves and high-speed jets of liquid, causing significant physical effects. This can alter cell structures, increase mass transfer rates, and aid in the extraction of intracellular components.
- Micro-streaming: Around the bubbles, those produced by cavitation, there are small but fast liquid flows known as micro-streaming. This action can induce shear forces that break cell membranes and facilitate the mixing of liquids and small particles.
The combination of these mechanical effects, in different time and temperature conditions, allows for achieving the wide range of effects listed earlier. At the basis of most of these, there is the destruction of cellular membranes to increase extraction yield in fruit juices, emulsification in dairy products and similar to mayonnaise, the inactivation of microorganisms and enzymes for preservation purposes in some circumstances, and their activation to accelerate fermentative processes in others.
Want to know more?
Sonicook is available! After two years of testing and collaborations with various chefs and industry experts, today we can offer it to professionals all over the world. Contact us for more information or follow our social channels for all the latest Besser Vacuum news!
