While the scale of my country's snack food industry has grown, the varieties and categories have also increased significantly. At present, the snack foods on the market mainly include the following categories: baked snack foods, puffed snack foods, fried snack foods, nuts, roasted seeds and nuts snack foods , Dried fruit and vegetable snack foods, soy products, edible fungi, dried meat, meat snacks and candy snacks.

Variety of raw materials

The variety of snack foods is inseparable from abundant raw materials. Confectionery, candied fruit, and potato puffed snack food are the earliest industries that have developed more maturely and have formed a strong echelon of leading brands. The production of snack foods is closely linked to agricultural resources. With the increase in people's demand and the advancement of food industry technology, more and more agricultural products enter the snack food market. Traditional raw materials rice noodles, flour, and potatoes can no longer keep up with the rapid development of snack foods. With the pace, green beans, dried fruits and vegetables, dried beef, dried squid and other emerging snack foods gradually appeared on supermarket shelves.

In recent years, instant enoki mushroom products have become popular in the market, showing a strong upward trend. Instant enoki mushrooms began to emerge around 2008. At that time, Jin Dazhou, an edible mushroom-based company, found in market research that enoki mushrooms It has planting advantages with other edible fungi, and has a broad consumption base, so the company began to develop new products using Flammulina velutipes as raw materials, and instant Flammulina velutipes was born. Driven by Jin Dazhou, many edible fungi companies have followed suit and have promoted instant enoki mushroom as a hot product. This market boom has gradually shifted from the northern market dominated by Northeast and North China to the southern market, and finally achieved nationalization without distinction. Diversified consumption flavors.

At present, consumers' needs are becoming increasingly diversified and individualized, and they are particularly picky about the taste of snack foods. In the past, snack foods with a single taste would not meet the diverse needs of consumers. At the same time, with the development of the food flavor and fragrance industry, while the types of snack foods are diversified, the flavors are gradually enriched, and each snack food is subdivided into multiple flavors. Most of the excellent snack food companies promote the diversification of tastes, segment consumers with the diversification of tastes, and meet the needs of consumers for multiple tastes with the serialization of tastes.

Take Lay's potato chips under Pepsi as an example. In order to meet the individual needs of different consumers, Lay's not only introduces classic original flavor, fresh tomato, French crispy chicken, Zizi barbecue flavor, Texas barbecue flavor, and fragrance spicy hot pot. Potato chips with diversified popular flavors such as yogurt onion flavor, Italian red stew flavor, secret sour soup fish, Madden Coke chicken flavor, cheese baked lobster flavor and other complex flavor potato chips to cater to consumers’ preferences. Compounding has also become a major trend in the development of snack food flavors. In order to cater to the different preferences of consumers in different regions, snack food companies will adjust and improve products with regional characteristics and tastes and introduce them to the national market. The popularity of products such as "Hunan and Chongqing Special Snack Food-Dried Tofu" is the result of improving regional tastes.

Seasoning is the key to enhance flavor

(2) Spreading

The state of the seasoning used for external sprinkling is divided into powder, liquid, and paste state, which means that the external sprinkling process is diversified. Generally, fried products can be directly used with external powder. This method is suitable for products with small volume and surface area. The addition amount of external powder is generally between 3%-8%. At the same time, the seasoning powder is required to have good fluidity. , It is not easy to absorb moisture and fly. Generally, the particle size of external powder is between 60-100 mesh. Liquid and paste seasonings can be seasoned by dipping, spraying and dipping. The material liquid adheres to the surface of the embryo body, and the water is removed after hot air drying. Fresh-cut potato chips are typical snack foods that are sprinkled outside. In addition, snack foods such as puffed foods, green beans, beef jerky, and small fish that have been internally adjusted can be sprinkled outside to further enrich the product flavor, Enhance people's appetite.

(3) Sandwich

The sandwich and center-focused seasoning methods can overcome the thermal instability of the inner flavor and the insufficient aftertaste of the external flavor. By increasing the seasoning to increase the aftertaste of the product, at the same time, the appropriate amount of nutrition and health factors can be added to give the product more Play the space and get rid of the shadow of junk food. The heart-shaped brown rice rolls that are popular on the market now use a combination of internal blending, external sprinkling and heart-focusing. They have a crispy taste, diverse flavors and rich nutrition, and are deeply loved by consumers. Biscuit filling gives biscuits a fragrant taste and is the preferred seasoning method of well-known biscuit companies, such as Kraft’s Oreo sandwich biscuits, Master Kong’s soda sandwich 3+2, Nestlé’s crunchy shark, etc.

With the development of food industry technology, the processing technology of snack foods has been continuously improved. Since the late 1980s, my country has successively introduced more than 30 fried potato production lines from the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and other countries. Fried puffed potato chips have become the most popular snack food. However, since potato chips are processed by high-temperature frying, the oil content is high, and fried foods are prone to produce carcinogens, so they are defined as junk food by consumers.

With the development of world science and technology and the continuous emergence of new technologies and new materials, potato chips processing technology has been diversified. Modern technologies such as low-temperature vacuum frying technology, baking technology, and microwave puffing technology are increasingly favored by food companies. Low-temperature vacuum fried potato chips not only retain the original flavor and nutrition of potato chips, but also have the characteristics of low fat and low calories. Orion launched the interesting baking type composite potato chips, which is deeply loved by consumers. The baking process not only reduces the oil content of the potato chips itself, but also reduces carcinogens such as tritetrabenzopyrene produced by frying. Chachaka crisp, Leba biscuits, clubbing crackers, and good time baked buns all use the baking process to replace the frying process, which caters to the consumer's health concept and obtains huge benefits for the enterprise.

Steaming techniques used in traditional staple foods such as steamed buns, buns, and dumplings are gradually being used in the food industry. Steamed food uses water vapor as the heat transfer medium, which can fully crack the starch polysaccharides in the food, which is beneficial to the body's absorption, while retaining the food's nutrients to the greatest extent, avoiding strong carcinogens such as benzopyrene generated under barbecue and frying conditions. At present, cooking food is no longer limited to family workshop-style processing. The popular mochi, braised duck neck, chicken feet, and braised eggs on the market all adopt modern cooking techniques to ensure the flavor and nutrition of the food while providing consumers with fast service , Has a huge market and broad development prospects

After more than ten years of development, my country's snack food industry has undergone earth-shaking changes. The dazzling array of snack foods on supermarket shelves is dazzling. The abundance of raw materials for snack foods, the improvement of food processing technology and consumers' pursuit of diversified snack foods have resulted in the diversification of snack food forms. Potato Chips, Shrimp Crackers, Corn Bars, Wonderful Crisp Corners, Chicken Flavored Nuggets, Tacos, Rice Crackers, Fruit and Vegetable Crisps, Small UFOs, Salad Chips, Finger Biscuits, Small Twist, Rice Crust, Dim Sum, Popcorn, Dim Sum Noodles, Various forms of snack foods such as rusk, small fish, chicken feet, etc. have emerged one after another, winning a place in the competitive snack food market.

The diversity of snack food forms is inseparable from the snack food consumer group. Teenagers and children belong to the subjective consumer group. They are willing to try new and fun snack foods when choosing snack foods, such as snack foods with strange shapes and leisure food with cartoon elements. Food etc. According to the characteristics of the consumer group, the Prince Crispy Biscuits under Kraft of the United States creates various cartoon embryos, which are deeply loved by teenagers and children. Panpan Food Group launched Meniere dry cakes to innovate the traditional form of cakes, and extend the shelf life of cakes, simply crisp, healthy and delicious, and won the favor of consumers.

The edible flavor and fragrance industry, which integrates high-tech nutrition and health core raw materials and flavor ingredients, is an upstream industry for snack foods. According to market demand, it adopts biological enzymatic hydrolysis technology, Maillard reaction technology, microcapsule embedding, cooking and extraction, etc. Technical preparation of basic materials plays an irreplaceable role in enriching the flavor of snack foods. At the same time, the diversification of snack food flavors drives the development of the flavor and fragrance industry. The domestic first lipid flavor technology has become a new breakthrough in the field of salty flavor technology. It enables downstream products including snack foods to fully reflect the strong characteristic aroma and rich taste, and greatly improves the quality of the applied products.

Application of Seasoning in Snack Food

Seasonings play a decisive role in the taste of snack foods. The application methods of seasonings in snack foods are roughly divided into internal adjustment, external sprinkling and filling. In actual operation, the flavoring method can be flexibly adopted according to the characteristics and requirements of different products.

(1) Internal adjustment

Reflecting the high-temperature and baking-resistant meat flavor of high-end raw materials in puffed snack foods is the internal adjustment of snack foods. This is one of the innovative seasonings of snack foods today. It is a seasoning method in which seasonings are added to the raw materials during the preparation of the embryonic material to make the product taste, and the internal adjustment can increase the bottom taste of the snack food and enrich the taste of the snack food.

The seasoning used for internal conditioning must have good high temperature resistance. It can keep the flavor of the seasoning unchanged under a high temperature (180°C-200°C) environment without affecting the taste of the product. Generally, the thermal reaction type flavoring material is suitable, and the general addition amount ranges from 2% to 5%, which can be flexibly adjusted according to actual operation. As a typical puffed food, internal adjustment is an essential seasoning method for shrimp crackers. The process is as follows:

 The shrimp sticks after internal conditioning have a strong shrimp flavor. The amino acids, peptides, short-chain peptides and other substances in the shrimp powder undergo Maillard reaction with reducing sugars to produce fragrance substances, which make the shrimp sticks have a certain fragrance. At the same time, the internally adjusted shrimp crackers have high protein, calcium and other substances, rich in nutrients, and have broad market prospects. The internal adjustment method is not limited to shrimp crackers. All puffed foods can be internally adjusted to enhance the taste of the product, such as: compound potato chips, crispy rice, chicken flavor pieces, etc.