Apparatus for producing thin portions of pasta filata cheese
OwnerMarco M. Meyerinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A technique for producing sliced, shredded and/or diced cheese of the pasta filata type. The technique utilizes a plurality of rollers which reduce an extruded strand of cheese to a ribbon of the desired thickness. The rollers are heated and a spray of warm water is applied to the cheese to keep the ribbon plastic and pliable. The edges of the sheet are trimmed, and then the sheet is run through a brine tank or sprayed with a brine mixture to salt the sheet for the desired amount of time. Thereafter, the sheet is cooled and cut into any desired shaped to create an end product of controlled size and weight. The trimmings are returned to the extruder, reheated, and reused.
Claims23
Apparatus for producing thin, slice-like portions of cheese of the pasta filate type, said portions having a desired thickness and quantity of cheese, said apparatus comprising:
- means for forming a heated, deformable, ribbon of pasta filate cheese moving in a direction away from the point of formation;
- means receiving the ribbon of cheese and applying pressure to the heated, deformable ribbon of cheese in a single direction normal the direction of movement, said means applying pressure at a succession of points along the direction of movement for sequentially reducing the size of said ribbon in a dimension parallel to the direction of pressure application to a desired thickness while simultaneously increasing the dimension of the ribbon through free and unrestrained expansion in a dimension that is normal to the direction of pressure application and to the direction of movement thereby to form a flattened ribbon of cheese;
- means for maintaining the heated state of the cheese operatively associated with said pressure applying means;
- and
- means located downstream of said pressure applying means for severing the flattened ribbon into portions having the desired quantity of cheese.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.