Asian Noodle Technology Course held at the Wheat Marketing Center, Portland

Asian Noodle Technology Course held at the Wheat Marketing Center, Portland

The Wheat Marketing Center together with the Food Innovations Center held another excellent advanced course on the manufacturing of dried Asian style noodles. Asian style noodles are popular all over the world for their convenience, low price and the long shelf life they provide the end use consumer. Asian noodles are packed in plastic cups or formed in a square and wrapped in plastic. Many countries lack refrigeration for foods that need to be used in a few days or weeks. Asian noodles are perfect for all climate conditions and easy to prepare and serve.

This class has taught many hundreds of people from all over the world on the science in making a good quality dried noodle. The course was held in the Old Alber’s Mill along the Willamette river waterfront near downtown Portland and ran the entire week of August 7th. This time the course was held for a group of food industry people from Nigeria which included people from the milling and baking industry.

The Wheat Marketing Center holds other short courses on many other products that also use the NW soft wheat that is grown exclusively in the NW region of the US. Soft winter wheat is lower in protein than the hard winter wheat variety that is used in bread type doughs. Higher gluten is desired for good cell structure and strength, lower gluten level is desirable for making flat breads, cakes, cookies and Asian style noodles.

The course includes in depth sessions on using phosphates, wheat protein isolates, resistant starches and hydrocolloid as ingredients in making high quality dried Asian style noodles. They included a session on making the seasoning that goes into the individual serving packets for each package. The seasoning blend in the packets is key in making the product taste and smell desirable in every country that produces them. No matter the flavors they choose they have to decide on how to enhance those flavors.

In the seasoning session we told the students how their flavor enhancing chemist tool belt included Salt, Glutamic acid in the form of MSG or Yeast Extracts as well as Nucleotides and Peptides. The proof of the performance of the yeast extracts, was when we showed the students the three demo’s I’d prepared. I used the Provesta 349, poultry enhancing yeast extract in a chicken broth, the Provesta 347 extract in a beef broth and the Provesta 512 extract in a vegetable broth.

At .025% we showed them how much a little bit of the yeast extracts can affect the seasonings flavor and have an overall umami effect on the broth. All agreed the broth was much fuller and flavorful using the yeast extracts. They finished the week making their own dried Asian Noodle product and all were going to use the samples of Ohly yeast extracts that I left for them.

The Ohly yeast extracts and other products work in all varieties of food products. If you’re working on a food product that needs some extra flavor enhancement or to bring out certain flavor notes.

Please get in touch with your local SPI Group representative and ask for an Ohly product list and demonstration on how they would work in your product.