Vietnam is a country with high annual bird’s nest production and this is also a strong domestic consumption product as well as export. There are many products from bird’s nest that need to be dried with different drying requirements such as raw bird’s nest (preliminarily processed, remove feathers and dried to shape), dried instant bird’s nest with many different production methods. …Therefore, you need to understand the advantages and disadvantages of drying methods to choose, freeze dried bird’s nest and cold dried, understand the differences and how to use them.
Raw bird’s nest is a type of bird’s nest that has been dried but cannot be eaten. It must go through the process of steaming the bird’s nest along with many other ingredients before it can be eaten. This type of bird’s nest is the main product sold on the market today. Of course, along with finished bird’s nest materials, there are new products, serving small needs and niche markets. To dry raw bird’s nest materials (after pre-processing, washing, picking feathers, and shaping with stainless steel molds), nowadays we often use a heat pump dryer to dry bird’s nest at a low temperature of 15~30oC, ensuring the dried bird’s nest is beautifull, naturally white, does not turn the bird’s nest pale yellow. Cases of drying bird’s nest at high temperatures above 30oC often cause the bird’s nest to turn pale yellow, so the product price is lower because it is considered not equal the cold drying. So when is freeze drying used for bird’s nest?
Freeze dried bird’s net and cold dried bird’s nests both have specific and necessary applications, they are not interchangeable. The characteristics of cold-dried bird’s nest are its dry, hard texture, shrinkage, and quick drying, so when using it, you need to steam the bird’s nest for many minutes to ensure it can be used. As for freeze-dried bird’s nest, the structure is porous and does not shrink, so it absorbs water very quickly when boiling water is poured into the bird’s nest. Therefore, to produce instant bird’s nest products, it requires drying with suitable requirements for absorbing water very quickly, high dryness when dried, of course the bird’s nest must be cooked with appropriate ingredients or steam each ingredient separately. Product packaging will depend on how many ingredients are dried separately.
The 2 images above and below are both completely dried bird’s nest products dried with a freeze dryer. They can be crushed easily because the product texture is very porous because the water content in the product has completely evaporated and leave empty spaces inside. You can boil bird’s nest with other ingredients such as lotus seeds, cordyceps mushrooms, red apples… to create an instant bird’s nest soup mixture, then divide it evenly into drying trays as shown below. After the freeze-drying process, the product keeps its shape according to the original mold, is porous and does not shrink. There are differences between heat pump drying and freeze dried bird’s nests, and the usage will be different, so customers need to understand clearly to choose the right dryer for each product requirement.
So with the above basic information, Readers have clearly understood the differences and uses of cold dried and freeze-dried bird’s nests. Customers who need advice on drying specific products, please contact Mactech Vietnam directly for effective information. Thank you for understanding the shared content.
