HPP Meat & Seafood

Anyone who values a good cut of meat knows that preservatives can be the biggest thing standing between you and a good meal. When your meat is visibly old but still qualifies under “good enough,” you’re settling for a quality that you should never have to. That’s why we’re a part of the movement that’s changing the game. We didn’t invent high pressure processing, but we’re a leader in the movement to change the way food is processed, and that starts with seafood and meat.

Here at HPPLA, we specialize in a process called Pascalization, or high pressure processing (HPP). HPP meat is processed meat that’s unlike any you’ve tried before. Utilizing safe, more natural and healthy strategies and technology, our equipment delivers meats and HPP seafood that truly lock in their freshness, flavor, and yes, organic makeup. We don’t genetically modify meats or treat them with harmful compounds because, quite frankly, it’s not necessary. Once your meat or seafood goes through the high pressure process meat will last longer and be safer to eat than thermally- or chemically-processed meats ever could with the same level of quality.

So what does that really even mean? How can HPP seafood or meat make that much of a difference? It starts with a process that revolutionizes the pasteurization process, developed by a philosopher and scientist back in the 1800’s. And for the last 25 years, technology had made it possible to produce real, effective results that are changing the way meat and seafood are shipped all over the country.

How Does The High Pressure Processing of Meat Work?

From steaks to lamb chops, the high pressure processing meat endures is all the same, and the results are unmatched by any other strategy. The meat starts this process pre-bagged so that it is not reintroduced to contaminants that might infect it.

Whether you’re the executive chef at the Four Seasons in downtown Los Angeles, or you own one of the many top-rated restaurants on the Third Street promenade in Santa Monica, we’re confident you’ll be able to take advantage of HPP seafood and meats. Whether you have a food truck that brings the best tacos all over the Westside and East LA, from Pasadena to Culver City, we have customers who have revolutionized their business with the benefits of a quality high pressure processing.

The bags are then loaded into pods that are placed in a high pressure chamber. The chamber is then filled with low pressure, which expels and remaining air from the chamber, which can allow for perfectly equal pressure to be exerted across all of the meat.

The meat is the then is exposed to upwards of 50,000psi of pressure for a period of up to 15 minutes or more, which both intermittent and constant pressure being exerted by the water all around it. This way, there’s no part of the meat that gets distorted or malformed. During this time, three key things take place: proteins are denatured, hydrogen bonds get fortified, and non-covalent bonds are broken down. This ensures that while the organic composition of the meat is not changed, the cell walls of harmful pathogens such as bacteria, yeast and mold, are broken down, rendering bacteria inactive. This inactivation of such microorganisms not only makes the food safer to consume, but also prolongs the shelf life, so that it does not spoil so quickly.

This can work even for high pressure processing sausage, where the myriad of meats that make up the sausage are ensure to be of top quality, and the HPP sausage is then free of pathogens from meat that may have contained certain bacteria.

What about HPP Seafood?

HPP seafood undergoes the same process. Interestingly, some other things were discovered in the process of high pressure processing seafood: for one, mollusks can be very quickly and easily shucked. The muscle on an oyster or muscle shell will no longer be able to clench shut, creating a higher yield of mollusk meat. Similarly, crustaceans like King crab, lobster, etc., are easily de-shelled when they undergo the process of HPP.

The beauty of using high pressure processing is that the meat is not exposed to heat or chemicals. Instead, being only exposed to cold water and pressure, without the risk of recontamination, the meat finds a longer shelf life, its nutritional composition isn’t compromised, and it creates a higher yield when harvesting meat from shells.

In all, using HPP for your meats and seafood isn’t just something that’s beneficial to your customers, it creates an overall better product for your company: more meat, better meat, and meat that lasts a long time.

Just because you have a large customer base, it doesn’t mean you have to suffer from using shortcuts to keep your seafood lasting longer. Contact us to find out how HPP can revolutionize your meat packaging today!