摘要 |
A frozen foodstuff tempering method includes forming a number of frozen foodstuff pieces into one or more discrete streams of material and then heating the stream or streams of material to raise the temperature of the material to a suitable working temperature. The streams of frozen foodstuff pieces may be formed by driving the pieces through small internal cross-section tempering tubes (12). One or more relatively large masses of frozen foodstuff may be comminuted to produce the desired frozen foodstuff pieces which are formed into the discrete stream or streams. Heat is applied to the stream or streams of frozen foodstuff pieces either directly by infrared, microwave, or conventional heating. Where the streams of frozen foodstuff are formed through conduits (12), the foodstuff pieces may be heated indirectly by heating the conduit material. |