Throughout human history, every civilisation has purposefully searched for ways to add flavour to food of all types, including as a means to preserve and extend the life of food. As a result, new flavours were found from techniques such as smoking and vinegar pickling.
It seems an inherent human desire to seek out complex flavours using seeds, flowers, roots, shoots, berries, stalk, leaves, and peel. It is such a deep-rooted practice that spices have been used as an integral part of rituals, celebrations, medicinal compounds, perfumes, and even as currency.
Over the decades, specific regulations have been drawn up for spices, just as has happened with other ingredients provided by nature, which govern their collection, uses, and processing under guidelines that ensure quality and food safety, both as finished products and as ingredients to be used in manufacturing processes.
There are many different categories of spices and groups of spices and today we will be looking at seasonings: blends of spices (and added approved substances) which, in accordance with Article 6 of Royal Decree 2242/1984, of 26 September, which approves the Technical Health Regulation on the production, movement, and trade of condiments and spices, hold all the necessary qualities for their intended use, in this case, as ready to use condiments for a specific use.
In this line, the food industry has witnessed increasing demand for snacks. These tend to be light and increasingly healthy and cater to the need to eat small amounts between meals, either purely for pleasure or to keep up energy levels throughout the working day.
This trend has been accompanied by consumers’ well-known desire for new and memorable flavours, that bring to mind exotic destinations or take us back to our childhood.
Faced with this cocktail of factors, at Muñoz y Pujante, we are very pleased with the developments that have taken place in this area which our R&D team has been able to make the very most of so that today we have a great number of customers who choose to use our delicious flavour combinations for their snacks.
In close consideration of the base that the flavouring is to be applied to (which may be a snack extruded from corn, potato starch, dehydrated or baked vegetables, or pulse flour, or other options), Muñoz y Pujante industrial seasonings, created with specially selected spices, deliver even flavour notes, pungency, salinity, and colour. This evenness allows for the production of snacks by regulating the stability of the desired sensory properties in products of this type. It also ensures they can be adapted to different industrial application methods: mixing pumps or spraying the flavouring solution.
Our seasonings have a special grain size distribution which boosts surface absorption in the base product to prevent lumps and clumps in the mixing process. Furthermore, the manufacturing advantages are not limited to the technical properties of the seasoning, they also include the cost savings brought by the controlled adding of a high-performance flavour enhancer and reducing the risk of errors in the earlier seasoning preparation phase.
From the classic seasonings including Ham and Cheese flavour, Provencal Herbs, delicious Mushrooms, to more unique combinations: Sweet Mexican Fajita seasoning or creamy Italian Soup. The possibilities are almost limitless and the working methodologies used by Muñoz y Pujante break down all limits to take culinary concepts to the production line to provide the end client with a delicious product featuring the quality and care that we are known for.
