Kronen embraces new trend product: vegetable rice

Vegetable-based alternatives to starches are already big business. In fact, Whole Foods listed pasta alternatives, like vegetable noodles, as one of the eight biggest food trends for 2017. Food companies are taking notice and they are expanding vegetable-based alternative beyond noodles.

Green Giant launched a $30 million campaign called “The Giant Awakens” around a suite of new products including riced veggies, which can replace white rice.

Equipment manufacturers are also aware of this trend, including KRONEN. At the PMA Fresh Summit in New Orleans in October 2017, KRONEN exhibited the KUJ V cutting machine, which can cube, strip and slice, allowing for the making of rice from different kinds of vegetables.

The company said cooking and eating habits have been changing over the past years and that healthy nutrition has come to the fore more and more.

“This includes the consumption of fruit and vegetables,” the company wrote in a release. “Furthermore the convenience sector gains importance.”

Vegetable rice can be produced from broccoli and cauliflower stems or also carrots cut in the smallest pieces to resemble rice. These products, KRONEN said, can be used to target health conscious consumers or even full-on vegetarians. Vegetable rice can be used as a substitution for regular rice or as a completely new food option. In addition, it can be used as a main dish component (e.g. for risotto) but as a side dish as well. It also can fill consumers’ demands for a nutritious option that is also convenient and quick to prepare at the same time.

Vegetable rice can be processed with the KRONEN KUJ V cutting machine, which can cut small, oblong vegetable strips from different sorts of vegetables using various alignments such as

a format of 3 x 3 x 5 millimeters. The KRONEN KUJ V cuts vegetables or fruit slices from 2 to 12 millimeters, strips from 2 to 20 millimeters and cubes of 3 millimeters up to 20 millimeters in exact, perfect cutting quality and in a single operation.

KUJ V Machine Details:

• Depending on the product and cutting thickness, the capacity is between 300to 3000 kilograms per hour.
• High quality accessories enable neat slicing, thus improving the shelf life of the products.
• Even delicate products (such as onions, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes,courgettes or slightly frozen products) can be processed.
• The standard built-in frequency converter with seven adjustable speeds guarantees a gentle cut of sensitive products such as strawberries or beetroot, etc.
• In addition to larger dices of apples, melons, ham, cooked or chilled meat and a variety of vegetables, tiny cubes as small as 3 x 3 millimeters (Brunoise) can be cut and also thin, oblong strips e.g. in 3 x 3 x 5 millimeters format (vegetable rice)
• For dips, soups, sauces, salads and much more, the KUJ V can produce fine strips in 2 x 2 millimeters thickness.