Decide

This is the second week of the food product development project. Last week, we all worked collaboratively to create our three visions: sweet chicken bacon wraps, buffalo chicken wontons, and bacon chicken jalapeno poppers. The objective of last week’s meeting was to formulate and prepare the three products with the inclusion of chicken in each food product. After preparing and tasting our foods, it was required that our group decide on which product we would like to proceed. It is essential to make this product perfectly because we will be presenting it to a panel of judges at the end of the semester during the Further Processing & Products food product competition. Once we entered the kitchen and gathered our ingredients and cooking supplies, we started cooking. Since we had to use chicken in all 3 products, we first decided to boil the chicken since this takes the longest amount of time; the chicken was boiled to ensure that the chicken had an internal temperature of 165 °F. The second product that was cooked was the bacon to be used in the poppers and the sweet chicken wraps. After the chicken was done the cooking, we shredded it to use in our three products. After the bacon was done the cooking, we chopped it up into little pieces for the poppers. However, the other pieces of bacon were not chopped because they were used for the chicken bacon wraps (essentially a chicken meatball with bacon wrapped around) and for the outside of the poppers.

For the jalapeno poppers, we cut the jalapeno peppers in half and removed all the seeds. We then formulated a mixture of cream cheese, shredded cheddar cheese, cut pieces of bacon, salt, and pepper in a bowl; once we finished the mixture, it was placed inside of the jalapeno pepper. The jalapeno pepper was then wrapped in cooked bacon and set into the oven at 350 °F for 30 minutes. This product was delicious, but unfortunately, the originality of this product was very low, being that there are similar products on the market already. Therefore, we decided that we would not proceed with this product for the competition.

The sweet chicken bacon wrapped balls actually turned out horrible. The chicken was fully cooked, shredded, and then formed into a ball. The ball was then rolled in brown sugar and wrapped in bacon. It was then placed in the oven and cooked for 30 minutes for 350 °F. This was a major mistake because the chicken was already fully cooked before being placed in the oven and once they were fully cooked again, we lost all of our moisture in the meat. The chicken balls turned out extremely dry, and it was almost like eating jerky without flavor. This product was discarded from the three choices due to it tasting poorly.

The third product that we cooked was the buffalo chicken wontons. This product was simply amazing and will be the product that we will work on perfecting for the rest of the semester. The buffalo chicken dip was made with cream cheese, buffalo sauce, shredded cream cheese, and ranch dressing. After mixing the dip, a scoop was placed in the center of the wonton wrapping. A flour substrate was used to help glue the wrapper shut and then it was properly folded and put into the fryer. An egg-wash was used on the outside of the wrapper to bring out more of the golden color. The wonton was deep fried until the shell was golden brown; it turned out delicious! Once this wonton is perfect, I think it will be a hard product to beat in the competition.

For the next lab, we are planning on experimenting with flavors. In this lab, we will be preparing a buffalo dip mixture with blue cheese dressing to decide which one is better. If both of them taste good, then we can expand the line with this product for both flavor additions. A jalapeno pepper jelly will be created to create more texture, color and a spicy-coolness to the product. If this jelly works as a dipping sauce, it will be similar to wontons that are served with sweet and sour sauce. We will also be deciding on which functional ingredients that need to be added to our product (in addition to salt). This was hard to do previously since we didn’t know which product we would ultimately decide to do. After having some of the Poultry Science professors taste our product, it was agreed that we need to have a better ratio between dip and chicken. We received comments that there needed to be more chicken. It is hard to put a large amount of the dip in the center of the wonton because it is small. If too much is added, the wonton will break, therefore, we will be trying our recipe with spring/egg rolls to provide a better ratio and a bigger serving size. Until next time, happy cooking!

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