The present invention relates generally to shellfish and more particularly relates to a method for the preparation of portion controlled shellfish patties.
The frozen food industry is continually seeking to develop and introduce new frozen food products. A recently developed frozen food product is a portion controlled patty prepared from shrimp, sometimes referred to herein as a shrimp steak. The frozen product is prepared from small (Titi) sized imported shrimp. Titi size shrimp is the commercial term for tiny shrimp which have a count of to shrimp per pound. The patties are prepared by combining Titi size shrimp with suitable flavorings and thereafter printing the shrimp into portion-controlled patties.
The use of imported shrimp, however, presents a considerable problem to the industry in that imported shrimp received from any available foreign source is often found to be infected with extremely high bacterial count. This is attributed to the fact that handling of shellfish at ambient temperatures is extremely difficult without contributing bacterial contamination. Even though the foreign shrimp are frozen after harvestng, they incur sufficient handling at ambient temperatures to ncur an extremely high bacterial count. The table below illustrates the bacterial counts which are encountered from shrimp mported from various sources:
method for preparing frozen shrimp patties. It is a further object of the invention to provide a method for preparing Shellfsh patties wherein the bacterial contamination is reduced. It is a still further object of the invention to provide a method for 5 preparing frozen patties from shellfish wherein the shellfish are too large to be directly incorporated into a patty.