What’s a Bowl Cutter and Why Do You Need One?
Bowl choppers/cutters are industrial food processing machines that automate the chopping/cutting/emulsifying of food ingredients, efficiently turning raw meat into uniformly mixed and minced food for stuffing or further processing.
Most bowl cutters work by rotating a bowl containing meat and other ingredients, such as fat, spices, and ice. An arm with a rotating knife is lowered into the bowl, and the rotating knife spins to chop and mix the meat and other ingredients. By controlling the speed of the bowl, the speed of the rotating knife, and the knife height above the bowl, meat processors can achieve their desired degree of mincing/emulsification.
A bowl cutter is an essential piece of equipment for the processing of sausages, meatballs, patties, and more, because they evenly mix and emulsify ingredients to improve the quality of meat products. Bowl cutters are also beneficial for improving overall food safety and can help reduce processing time to increase throughput.
Improve Product Quality: The chopping/cutting/emulsification process can provide several benefits to a final food product, ranging from optimized product color to uniform mixing. The bowl cutting process not only uniformly mixes meat with other ingredients, but also improves the protein digestion, meat binding, and fineness of meat products for more uniform consistency.
Adding a vacuum option to a bowl cutter can further boost product quality. Chopping/cutting/emulsifying in a vacuum reduces fat oxidation, which results in optimized product color, while also extending product shelf life.
Additionally, when under vacuum, the density of meat products increases, which results in finer, more homogenous cutting and mixing, and improves protein breakdown. For example, vacuum bowl cutters from BAK Food Equipment can achieve cutting fineness of 40% to 90%. This increases the binding and stability of the emulsion while also improving the flavor of the end product.
Finally, the automated nature of bowl cutters from BAK Food Equipment safeguards product consistency from batch to batch, even as production volume grows.
Enhance Food Safety: Most bowl cutters feature smooth construction for easy cleaning and maintenance to meet or exceed food safety standards. For example, Nowicki bowl cutters available from BAK Food Equipment combine smooth, stainless-steel construction with hygienic geometry consisting of all flat, polished surfaces that are inclined 3° to maximize cleanability.
The vacuum option can prove beneficial yet again when it comes to food safety. Processing meat in a bowl cutter while under vacuum significantly reduces the proliferation of microorganisms and bacteria.
Additionally, the use of a bowl cutter with a cooking option can further improve hygiene by eliminating product transfers and operator interaction with the product. Thus, opportunities for product contamination and human error are vastly reduced.
Increase Throughput: Processors can also find value in bowl cutters/choppers for their ability to speed up operations. Of course, large-capacity automated machinery is quicker than manual chopping/mincing/emulsification, but the use of cooking options can also cut back on processing time by performing two operations in one machine. Plus, eliminating machine-to-machine product transfer also reduces the opportunity for product loss.
In the end, bowl cutters are an essential piece of food processing equipment that allow food processors to produce higher quality products in greater volume and less time, while maintaining or improving food safety.
When it comes to industrial bowl cutters, the range of options available in BAK Food Equipment’s portfolio can accommodate any application. Bowl chopper/cutters from BAK Food Equipment provide unmatched quality, durability, and performance.
With a focus on customization, safety, and efficiency, we have dedicated ourselves to meeting the unique needs of the food industry. Trust us to revolutionize your operations and let us equip you for new levels of success. Contact us to learn more about the benefits of a bowl cutter for your operation, discuss your equipment requirements, or schedule a consultation.