University of Reading food scientists are working with industry to make smoked foods taste even better while removing the harmful compounds from the smoke.
Smoked and smoke-flavoured foods, including smoky rubs, sauces and seasonings, have become an increasingly popular part of the UK diet – but some consumers worry about the cancer-causing chemicals found in smoke. Chemist Dr Jane Parker from the University of Reading’s Flavour Centre has worked with industry to come up with an innovation, PureTech, that makes smoked foods taste even better while removing harmful compounds.
Dr Parker pioneered a new filtration technology to improve the smoking process, working with innovative smokery BeSmoke, and food scientist Dr David Baines. Their aim was to develop a technology to significantly reduce carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in smoked foods and food ingredients, without losing the desirable smoky flavour.
They studied the effectiveness of filtering wood smoke through a zeolite, a highly regular and porous material used in filters which acts like a sieve to trap molecules of a certain size or shape. They experimented with zeolites of different grain sizes, using different pre-treatments to activate the mineral. These studies underpinned the development of an efficient and cost-effective industrial filtration process that removes more than 90% of harmful PAHs from wood smoke.
This ‘clean’ smoke can be applied to ingredients directly or used to impart smoky flavour to brining solutions. Not only is the clean smoke safer, but a panel of human tasters reported that the filtered-smoked foods tasted less harsh, more balance and savoury compared with the “acrid” and “ashtray” notes of the same foods flavoured with unfiltered smoke.
PureSmoke technology was patented in 2015 and launched as PureTech to the food and drink industry in 2016. It has already been used in development of Tesco and Fever Tree products and in August 2021 TMI Foods, signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Besmoke to build the PureSmoke technology into the bacon cooking and curing process at the company’s facility in Northampton, UK.