Many times the question has been asked …which is more effective for cooking products, steam or hot water? To better answer this question, ALKAR performed a series of tests in our own technical services lab.

The product that was used for the tests was a 55mm diameter product processed using identical times and temperatures with both steam and hot water as the heating media. The set points were 170° cook for 90 minutes followed by 60 minutes of brine chilling at 25°F. In each test, the product internal core temperature was at 167° after 90 minutes of cook time.

The results of the tests are demonstrated in the following graph which confirms that steam cooking and hot water cooking have almost identical curves. This is due to extremely high heat transfer coefficients of both steam and hot water