What is IQF Food?
Imagine enjoying a juicy strawberry in the middle of winter or savouring fresh blueberries months after they’ve been harvested. How is this possible? Individual Quick Freezing (IQF)!
This innovative technology freezes foods quickly and individually. No more clumpy, freezer-burned blobs; with IQF, each morsel is perfectly preserved, keeping its flavour, texture, and nutritional goodness intact. Join us as we explore how IQF keeps our foods deliciously fresh all year round.
What Does IQF Stand for in Food?
IQF stands for Individual Quick Freezing, which is a freezing technique that involves rapidly freezing each piece of food individually. This differs from traditional freezing methods, where food is frozen in larger batches.
IQF technology is typically used for smaller pieces of food, such as berries, fruits, sliced or diced vegetables, meat, shrimp, and cheese. Items that have been frozen by IQF are usually referred to as individually quick frozen.
What’s the Difference Between Conventional Freezing and IQF?
Conventional freezing slowly freezes fruit and vegetables that are on a tray, pallet or container. Items are usually frozen in big batches, and it is an inexpensive and simple process. However, freezing food in this manner can cause large ice crystals to form in the food which has a negative impact on the flavour, texture and colour of the food.
IQF freezing rapidly freezes individual pieces of fruit and vegetables. This is best for freezing smaller items like berries, fruit and veg chunks. By rapidly freezing the food, the formation of ice crystals is minimised, helping to preserve the colour, flavour and texture of the items.
This flash-freezing process locks in the natural flavours and nutrients, preserving the peak ripeness of produce.
What’s the Difference Between IQF and Blast Freezing?
While both IQF and blast freezing are methods used to freeze food quickly to preserve its quality, they have distinct differences.
IQF involves freezing individual pieces of food quickly. Each piece of food remains separate, making it easy to portion out exactly what you need. It is ideal for small or irregularly shaped items like berries, shrimp, or peas.
Blast Freezing involves food being placed in a blast freezer where extremely cold air circulates around it, rapidly lowering its temperature. It is typically used for bulk quantities, resulting in food items freezing together unless separated before freezing. Blast freezing is commonly used for larger items or packaged foods like whole fish, meat cuts, or prepared meals.
How Does IQF Work?
After harvesting, food items are washed, peeled, cut, or otherwise prepared as needed. The food is then frozen using one of two methods.
Mechanical Freezing
For mechanical freezing, food is placed in a stream of cold air that causes it to freeze quickly and individually. Food is frozen at extremely low temperatures, between -30°C and -40°C. The process has been refined over the years to limit the impact of freezing on the food so that the nutrition, taste and texture remain as good as possible.
Cryogenic Freezing
Liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide is used to freeze the food rapidly at extremely low temperatures. This method is very fast and effective for maintaining food quality.
However, it is much more expensive than mechanical freezing, so most IQF frozen fruit suppliers use mechanical freezing due to lower energy consumption and lower operating costs.
Once frozen, the individual food pieces are packaged for storage and distribution.
IQF Fruits and Veg at Projuice
All of our IQF fruits and vegetables are sustainably sourced and 100% traceable to provide you and your customers with only the very best. Our IQF fruits and vegetables are supplied by Crops. The fruit is cut and frozen within 2-4 hours of harvesting, which helps to preserve the natural flavours, vitamins and textures, ensuring you can consistently create great-tasting food and drink.
Benefits of IQF
In contrast to fresh fruit, which may spend days to weeks in transit before reaching your plate, IQF frozen fruit undergoes the freezing process within hours of harvest. This flash-freezing technology captures the essential vitamins and minerals at their peak, ensuring that the frozen produce remains nutrient-dense.
Quality Preservation
One of the most significant benefits of IQF is the preservation of food quality. The rapid freezing process used in IQF minimises the formation of large ice crystals, which are common in traditional freezing methods. Large ice crystals can damage the cell structure of food, leading to a loss of texture and flavour.
By freezing food quickly, IQF ensures that ice crystals remain small, preserving the integrity of the food. This means that fruits, vegetables, seafood, and other items retain their original taste, texture, and nutritional value, making them more appealing to consumers.
Convenience
IQF offers unparalleled convenience for both consumers and food service providers. Since the food items are frozen individually, users can easily portion out exactly what they need without having to defrost an entire package. This is particularly beneficial for products like berries, fruits, or diced vegetables, where precise portions are often required.
The ability to use only what is needed helps reduce preparation time and simplifies meal planning, making it an ideal solution for busy households and commercial kitchens alike.
At Projuice, we use IQF fruit and veg to create our easy-to-use pre-portioned smoothie blends. They come in 150g single-serving packs that are ready to blend, helping to reduce product waste and improve consistency with servings.
Availability
Since fruit and vegetables are seasonal crops, IQF produce allows you to use ingredients all year round, while tasting the same as when they were harvested! This is particularly useful for tropical fruits and berries, which are harder to source fresh all year round.
IQF fruits and vegetables allow you to serve a consistent menu, with all the ingredients available no matter the season. This should also help to keep prices consistent throughout the year too, as you won’t have to pay more for fruits when they’re not in season.
Extended Shelf Life
The quick freezing process of IQF significantly extends the shelf life of food products. By freezing food quickly after harvest, the quality of the fruit is higher and can last much longer. This means that IQF foods can be stored for longer periods without compromising quality, so you can dramatically reduce spoilage and waste.
For businesses, this extended shelf life translates to more flexibility, fewer inventory turnovers and less frequent restocking, which can lead to cost savings.
Reduced Waste
IQF helps in reducing food waste in several ways. First, because the food items are frozen individually, there is less likelihood of having to discard entire packages of food due to spoilage. Consumers and food service providers can take out and use only the amount they need, keeping the rest frozen and preserved.
Additionally, the quality preservation aspect of IQF means that less food is wasted due to poor texture or flavour upon use. This reduction in waste is beneficial not only from an economic standpoint but also from an environmental perspective, as it reduces the overall demand for food production and the associated environmental impacts.
Choosing IQF fruit will help to ensure that your food and drinks consistently taste the best they can! Browse our range of smoothie mixes for pre-portioned IQF fruits, perfect for popping in the blender for an instant sip of greatness, or wholesale frozen fruits and veg, so you can stay stocked up on flavourful ingredients all year round!