US 5,846,594 AGranted

Method of processing salmonoid fish

AssigneeArctic Alaska Seafoods, Inc.

InventorsPeter A. Zimmerman, Henry M. Bissell, IV, Gregory S. McIntosh

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Abstract

Fish of the Salmonoid family (salmon, trout and their relatives) is preferably first trimmed to remove heads, tails, fins, entrails, skin and bones and cut into fillets or loins to facilitate further removal of dark meat, bone, bruised meat, blood and viscera. The remaining light meat is then vacuum tumbled with a marinade solution under reduced ambient pressures at rotational speeds and for times dependent upon the thickness of the fish fillets or loins. During the vacuum tumbling step, penetration of the marinade solution into the light meat is facilitated and thereby the mobility and accumulation of curd-forming, soluble fish proteins are greatly diminished, serving to fix such protein in place, to ultimately provide a greatly visually-reduced curd product. Additionally, this vacuum tumbling step softens any pin bones which may remain to ultimately provide a virtually boneless product. Thereafter, the product is weighed, hermetically sealed into containers, with or without the addition of supplemental ingredients in a "broth" solution, and is retorted at elevated temperature and pressure to heat-sterilize the product and to eliminate or render virtually invisible any remaining pin bones. The retorted, packaged product is then ready for storage, shipping and use. Preferably, the described method is carried out on an automated production line for high speed, economical processing to a superior ready-to-eat product.

Claims28

Dependent claims

A method of processing salmonoid fish to provide an improved food product devoid of visible bones, skin and dark meat and having no objectionable odor or bitter taste, said method comprising the steps of:

receiving individual fish and preparing each fish in accordance with a selected format;
removing from each fish in said selected format any remaining skin and dark meat;
preparing a marinating solution from selected ingredients in accordance with properties including flavor, color and texture to be achieved in the finished product;
placing the formatted fish in a vacuum tumbling machine together with a predetermined amount, relative to the quantity of fish meat, of said marinating solution;
operating the vacuum tumbling machine for a selected time, speed, temperature and degree of vacuum to facilitate penetration of the fish meat by said marinating solution;
removing the fish meat from the vacuum tumbling machine and separating the fish meat into portions of a selected size for packaging;
placing said portions of fish meat into individual retortable pouches;
vacuum sealing said retortable pouches with packaged fish meat portions inside;
moving said retortable pouches of packaged fish meat portions to a retort zone;
retorting said retortable pouches at a selected elevated temperature for a selected time sufficient to sterilize said packaged fish meat portions by killing bacteria and to dissolve any remaining pin bones;
and
passing a finished vacuum-sealed, sterilized, packaged fish meat product to a cooling and storage zone.

9 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.