What food equipment is needed to make indirect puffed snack food

Indirect puffed snack foods are also known as "third generation snack foods". The production of these foods has a common characteristic: they are not puffed directly after coming out of the extruder template. Additional processing steps are required to give it the appearance or texture, which generally includes frying or hot air puffing processes to remove moisture to obtain the final texture. Most indirect puffed foods have two common products, namely "pellet balls" and "formulated flakes".

Pellet balls are cooked in an extruder and pushed through the form at temperatures below 100℃. The dough is formed at a low temperature, which prevents the moisture in the material from turning to steam and puffing. An advantage of this process is the formation of complex shapes that would normally be destroyed by direct extrusion. The pellets are then dried so that the moisture content is below 12% to achieve stability. In this state pellets can be stored for a long time, transported over long distances and sold to small snack food producers (or directly to consumers), then fried to be puffed, coated with seasoning and packaged.

Many prepared flake foods (FCPS) on the market today can be prepared by different processing methods according to the patent literature, one of which is mainly extrusion, which is similar to the method of making pellet balls, but the main difference is that FCPS do not need to be dried to less than 12% water content for storage or sale. They are only lightly cooked during the extrusion stage, and the prepared flakes are usually pressed or cut into shapes similar to potato chips or tortillas after they emerge from the extrusion press, which are then fried to remove moisture and further complete the cooking process.