Chicken nuggets are made of boneless chicken or chicken mince coated with crumbs. It is now very popular in the fast food chain, and frozen chicken nuggets can often be seen in the family.
Since it’s very popular and affordable, the amount of chicken nuggets consumed yearly is vast. It is estimated that Americans eat 2.4 billion chicken nuggets each year.
The large consumption of chicken nuggets demands a highly efficient production line of chicken nuggets in the food processing plant.
The picture below shows the production flow of a typical chicken nugget workshop.
Grinder→Mixer→Forming Machine→Breading and coating machine→Continuous Fryer (flash fry)→Spiral oven→Pre-cooling-Spiral IQF freezer-Multihead weigher
Grinder
A grinder machine will grind the frozen chicken meat to mince with a particle size of 1-4 mm
Mixer
The mixer will then mix the chicken mince with spices, oil, flour, water, and other ingredients.
Nugget forming
The forming machine will then press the mixed chicken meat into nuggets. The forming machine can be fitted with different dies for different shapes. The forming machine is conveyorized and can be easily integrated into a production line.
Breading and coating machine
After the nugget is formed, the nugget will be coated with batter and crumbs. Both the batter and crumbs can be recycled by the machine to reduce the waste. The amount of the battering and crumbs can be adjusted by the PLC program.
Continuous fryer
The chicken nuggets will then be transferred to the continuous fryer. The fryer will flash fry the chicken nuggets to form a thin and golden crust.
The capacity can be between 800kg to 3000kg/hr. Square Technology’s fryer features a conveyor belt, oil filter, fire extinguisher, CIP system, etc.
The length of the fryer can be between 4 to 10 meters, and the belt width has the choice of 600mm and 1000mm. The oil can be heated by electrical heaters or thermal oil through tube heat exchangers.
Spiral oven
The continuous fryer will only freeze the surface of the chicken nugget. The inside of the nuggets is still raw (40℃). The chicken nuggets will then enter the spiral oven to be fully cooked.
The spiral oven has a mesh belt width of 600 mm or 1000mm, it can be easily integrated into the automatically formed product production line. Spiral Ovens have a capacity ranging from 500 to 3,000 kg per hour.
Pre-cooling
After the nuggets come about from the oven, the nuggets are hot(80℃) and steamy. They need to be pre-cooled to below 40℃ to remove excessive moisture and heat before entering the spiral freezer.
Otherwise, the refrigeration load of the spiral freezer will be too high, and the moisture from the nuggets will quickly be turned to ice on the evaporator in the freezer.
The pre-cooling can be a refrigerated tunnel/spiral cooler with an insulated enclosure at an air temperature of 5 ℃.
Spiral freezer
The chicken nuggets will then go to the self-stacking spiral freezer to further freeze to -18C.
The self-stacking spiral freezer is a compact and hygienic freezer design. Compared to the traditional low-tension spiral freezer, the self-stacking spiral freezer eliminates the rails supporting the belt, which means up to 50% more freezing output with the same footprint.
The conveyors are almost 100% accessible for cleaning thanks to the elimination of the belt rail and drum. The freezer has combined the state-of-the-art clean-in-place (CIP) system.
An open, easily cleanable, and accessible design optimizes sanitation standards and decreases system downtime for cleaning and maintenance.
This feature reduces contamination and extends the life of the equipment by preventing waste buildup and simplifying the cleaning process.
Multi-header weigher
The frozen chicken nuggets will then be fed into the multi-head weigher machines. Normally, a vibrating feeder is between the spiral freezer and the multi-header.
The multi-weigher machine will weigh the nuggets in hoppers before releasing them into the memory hoppers below.
The batch and weight of the nuggets will be calculated and stored in the machine’s data logger. The nuggets will then be transferred to the packing machine after weighing.
About Square Technology Group Co Ltd
Square Technology Group Co. Ltd is the largest IQF freezer and oven manufacturer in China with over 37 years of experience.
The product line includes a spiral oven, spiral freezer, plate freezer, tunnel IQF, refrigeration system, cold storage, air cooler, insulated panel, cooker, oven, ice machine, etc.
Contact ntfe@ntsquare.com to learn more about the IQF freezer products.
