MACÈ PRESERVES AND CONSERVES

HOW WE PRESERVE RAW MATERIAL AND CONSERVE OUR PRODUCTS

Our mission to make healthy food available to everyone at all times has allowed us over more than 20 years to study, experiment and develop new recipes that combine good food and innovation.

Macé's fresh sauces and legume snacks are precisely the fruit of this union.

The Research and Development department, which has always been the beating heart of Macè, has always had as its primary objective to preserve, i.e. not to damage the raw material in any way during the entire production process.

Why is it important to preserve?

Preserving the material means protecting it, respecting its natural authenticity and processing it with extreme care. This is not obvious at all, and to achieve this you have to reduce processing to a minimum, and favour gentle processes, excluding high-temperature treatments if possible. Fruits and vegetables "cooked" at high temperatures, for example, lose not only most of their nutraceuticals (antioxidants) but also their taste, which is essential for a product to be good and satisfying to the palate. Furthermore, in the production of legume snacks, processes such as extrusion, i.e. breaking and reshaping the raw material, distort the ingredients and force the addition of particularly refined (fibre-free and fermentable) ingredients that act as binders.

How we preserve

In some preparations such as sauces, in keeping with culinary tradition, a large part of the vegetables must be cooked. In this case, we use slow cooking at low temperatures to best preserve it.  We always add herbs and raw vegetable fractions to these recipes. We are convinced that this mix of delicate processing and different textures is not only the added value of our products but also the solution to give the consumer an excellent product from an organoleptic and taste perspective while preserving the nutritional value of the vegetables.

Product preservation

We do not pasteurize.

High temperature pasteurization is used by the canning industry to increase the shelf life of the vast majority of food products (fruit juices, drinks, milk, sauces, etc.). It is a process that "changes" the raw material and is therefore often combined with the use of preservatives and other additives that improve the colour and taste of food.

At Macé, we do not need to add or take away anything from what the natural raw materials already offer us. So how do we ensure an adequate shelf life for our fresh produce?

How do we preserve

The answer lies in an acronym: HPP (High Pressure Processing), which is the high-pressure treatment to which we subject our fresh products (from fruit juices and fruit creams to pesto and sauces).

High pressure eliminates all unwanted microorganisms from the products and leaves the nutritional and sensory properties intact. This process takes place at low temperatures! (the temperature never exceeds 12°C).

 

So, at Macé, nature is the protagonist, which is why we promote its respect through the culture of non-thermal and simplicity.