SPONSORED CONTENT
Fresh Steps Forward
Get to know TREHA® and get the lowdown on a high-performing “new” ingredient
SPONSORED CONTENT
Fresh Steps Forward
Get to know TREHA® and get the lowdown on a high-performing “new” ingredient
By Flavor & The Menu
December 12, 2023
By Flavor & The Menu
December 12, 2023
The influence of umami on flavor building is so ubiquitous across cultural cuisines today that younger chefs might scoff at the suggestion that, not too long ago, umami was something of a culinary “secret,” little known outside of Japan. Now, it’s time to rev up the same U.S. awareness trajectory for TREHA®, the brand name for a high-purity trehalose from Nagase Food Ingredients. TREHA® is a simple, plant-based food ingredient with the amazing natural ability to extend many preservative and performance qualities in foods. Used throughout Japan for decades, TREHA® is poised to change how U.S. foodservice professionals think about preserving freshness, the same way umami revolutionized our understanding of enhancing flavor. It’s a “secret” weapon against spoilage and related food waste that any modern chef will benefit from having in their culinary toolbox.
“I think this is the most versatile and sensational food ingredient I have seen in the last 17 years.” Chef Sandy Cook, CRC, Culinary Science Consulting, doesn’t mince words when characterizing TREHA® and its transformative potential. A Certified Research Chef, Cook participated in a 2019 workshop to learn about trehalose, tasting, testing and exploring recipe possibilities. Noting that ingredients can be super specified for particular applications, Cook was pleased to discover that TREHA® has few, if any, such restrictions. It extends freshness to all types of food products, from proteins to produce to pastries. “Since the discovery of umami, no ingredient has had more reason for application,” declares Cook.
The Secret’s Out
TREHA® is a naturally occurring sugar that isn’t particularly rare; it can be found in a number of foods, including mushrooms, shellfish, dry yeast and fermented products like beer and wine. In fact, it’s likely you consume natural trehalose almost every day. More than 150 years after the discovery of trehalose, the Japanese company Hayashibara found a way to produce it in marketable quantities. Today, it is used as an ingredient in foods and beverages across Asia to maintain moisture, increase shelf life, stabilize proteins, reduce freeze-thaw damage and improve flavor, aroma and texture in both sweet and savory dishes.
Cook’s initial TREHA® workshop revealed an impressive spectrum of recipe applications for the product, which resembles simple table sugar, but is considerably less sweet. “We tasted the benefit of [using it] to keep tempura and breading systems crispy long after their traditional short shelf life. Sushi rice was as good on the second day as the first. The more I saw, the more I was impressed,” recounts Cook, who discovered potential far beyond the Asian pantry. “What really opened my eyes were dressed salads that held perfectly overnight. They tasted like they had just been tossed!”
He continues to detail the effects of TREHA® in action: “Cut avocado remained green and beautiful overnight. Crudité would not dry out when exposed to air. Fruit salad plates held their verve and identity. Grilled vegetables maintained moisture, color and particle identity. Celery and apple salads maintained moisture and didn’t brown. Marinated pork loins did not discolor with denaturation and held moisture and flavor. We battered fish for tacos, which were kept crispy, moist and delicious. Brined, roasted chicken also maintained moist white meat.”
Down to a Science
The properties of TREHA® bring science to the forefront of the culinary arts:
- While sugar is often used to preserve foods, barely sweet TREHA® won’t skew the flavor of products and it is far superior to other sugars in retaining moisture, thanks to the natural geometry of its two glucose molecules. It will keep meat proteins (chicken, shrimp, pork, beef) tender and juicy.
- TREHA® slows starch retrogradation: Rice won’t lose its fluffiness and bread will seem just-baked for days.
- It helps to maintain the natural structure of proteins, inhibiting coagulation. Cooked eggs will stay tempting from the beginning of the buffet service until the end. When baking with whipped eggs, replace some of the sucrose with TREHA®, and you’ll increase the volume of cakes, boost the flakiness of baked snacks and give cookies a light crispness, while enabling these baked goods to stay fresh and saleable significantly longer.
- Add TREHA® to the water bath you will use for cut pieces of vegetables and the produce will look and taste fresh hour after hour.
- TREHA® is very stable with heat and, as a non-reducing sugar, it doesn’t undergo the Maillard reaction and caramelization that alters color and flavor.
TREHA® is produced with a proprietary enzymatic technology, and it has been given GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It’s also deemed Kosher- and Halal-certified and is Non-GMO Project-certified.
7 Ways to Trade up with TREHA®
Preparing foods with TREHA® can improve quality and freshness across service concepts, dayparts, menu categories and individual items. For example:
- Protect the integrity of fresh pasta, keeping it from drying out and becoming sticky at your customizable pasta bowl station.
- Maintain a vibrant color and structural integrity in both raw and boiled veggies on the buffet line.
- Significantly reduce the frequency of stock updates for grab-and-go items like sandwiches, wraps, rice bowls, snack packs, fruit cups and baked goods.
- Rely on TREHA® to maintain the quality of delivery/to-go items, such as by extending the crispiness of batter-fried foods or holding the moisture of cooked meats.
- Considered “the baker’s friend,” TREHA® does more than keep baked goods moist. For example, using it in the glaze on yeast-raised doughnuts more than doubles their shelf life.
- Salad bar greens soaked in a 3 percent TREHA® water bath for 30 minutes can maintain their just-cut crispness for days.
- Using TREHA® when stewing meats helps keep the broth from separating when thawed and preserves the meat’s moisture.
Faced With Less Waste
USDA estimates that 40 percent of some 199 billion pounds of annual food waste is generated by restaurants, grocery stores and other foodservice operations. This sobering statistic is giving rise to a customer-driven moral imperative to reduce waste up and down the supply chain, especially in restaurant kitchens. Of course, with rising costs of food and labor, waste reduction is also an economic priority for operators.
In response, many chefs are exploring strategies like upcycling, zero-waste menu planning, nose-to-tail butchery and so on. Considering its ability to improve texture, flavor and taste, TREHA® offers the opportunity to extend the menu life of a wide range of foods that typically might not last more than one service. “Food is regularly discarded if it’s not deemed 100 percent fresh the next day,” says Cook. Consider your menu and review the shelf life of your bakery items, dairy foods, dressings/sauces, produce, grains, meat/fish, snack foods and more. How might TREHA® impact your menu development choices and procurement planning?
Cook acknowledges that these are difficult questions to answer without a certain degree of initial trial and error. “Until you’ve tried working with any new product, you’re not going to be sure how it will work for you. I urge you to try TREHA® in your operation,” he says.
Indeed, seeing is believing and TREHA® is an ingredient that boasts benefits you’ll want to see for yourself. The TREHA® website is a terrific source of information, featuring downloadable Usage and Cost Savings charts, service category-specific tips, menu and recipe inspirations and more, including a way to contact the Nagase team to request samples.
Visit the TREHA® website to explore the opportunities.
The influence of umami on flavor building is so ubiquitous across cultural cuisines today that younger chefs might scoff at the suggestion that, not too long ago, umami was something of a culinary “secret,” little known outside of Japan. Now, it’s time to rev up the same U.S. awareness trajectory for TREHA®, the brand name for a high-purity trehalose from Nagase Food Ingredients. TREHA® is a simple, plant-based food ingredient with the amazing natural ability to extend many preservative and performance qualities in foods. Used throughout Japan for decades, TREHA® is poised to change how U.S. foodservice professionals think about preserving freshness, the same way umami revolutionized our understanding of enhancing flavor. It’s a “secret” weapon against spoilage and related food waste that any modern chef will benefit from having in their culinary toolbox.
“I think this is the most versatile and sensational food ingredient I have seen in the last 17 years.” Chef Sandy Cook, CRC, Culinary Science Consulting, doesn’t mince words when characterizing TREHA® and its transformative potential. A Certified Research Chef, Cook participated in a 2019 workshop to learn about trehalose, tasting, testing and exploring recipe possibilities. Noting that ingredients can be super specified for particular applications, Cook was pleased to discover that TREHA® has few, if any, such restrictions. It extends freshness to all types of food products, from proteins to produce to pastries. “Since the discovery of umami, no ingredient has had more reason for application,” declares Cook.
The Secret’s Out
TREHA® is a naturally occurring sugar that isn’t particularly rare; it can be found in a number of foods, including mushrooms, shellfish, dry yeast and fermented products like beer and wine. In fact, it’s likely you consume natural trehalose almost every day. More than 150 years after the discovery of trehalose, the Japanese company Hayashibara found a way to produce it in marketable quantities. Today, it is used as an ingredient in foods and beverages across Asia to maintain moisture, increase shelf life, stabilize proteins, reduce freeze-thaw damage and improve flavor, aroma and texture in both sweet and savory dishes.
Cook’s initial TREHA® workshop revealed an impressive spectrum of recipe applications for the product, which resembles simple table sugar, but is considerably less sweet. “We tasted the benefit of [using it] to keep tempura and breading systems crispy long after their traditional short shelf life. Sushi rice was as good on the second day as the first. The more I saw, the more I was impressed,” recounts Cook, who discovered potential far beyond the Asian pantry. “What really opened my eyes were dressed salads that held perfectly overnight. They tasted like they had just been tossed!”
He continues to detail the effects of TREHA® in action: “Cut avocado remained green and beautiful overnight. Crudité would not dry out when exposed to air. Fruit salad plates held their verve and identity. Grilled vegetables maintained moisture, color and particle identity. Celery and apple salads maintained moisture and didn’t brown. Marinated pork loins did not discolor with denaturation and held moisture and flavor. We battered fish for tacos, which were kept crispy, moist and delicious. Brined, roasted chicken also maintained moist white meat.”
Down to a Science
The properties of TREHA® bring science to the forefront of the culinary arts:
- While sugar is often used to preserve foods, barely sweet TREHA® won’t skew the flavor of products and it is far superior to other sugars in retaining moisture, thanks to the natural geometry of its two glucose molecules. It will keep meat proteins (chicken, shrimp, pork, beef) tender and juicy.
- TREHA® slows starch retrogradation: Rice won’t lose its fluffiness and bread will seem just-baked for days.
- It helps to maintain the natural structure of proteins, inhibiting coagulation. Cooked eggs will stay tempting from the beginning of the buffet service until the end. When baking with whipped eggs, replace some of the sucrose with TREHA®, and you’ll increase the volume of cakes, boost the flakiness of baked snacks and give cookies a light crispness, while enabling these baked goods to stay fresh and saleable significantly longer.
- Add TREHA® to the water bath you will use for cut pieces of vegetables and the produce will look and taste fresh hour after hour.
- TREHA® is very stable with heat and, as a non-reducing sugar, it doesn’t undergo the Maillard reaction and caramelization that alters color and flavor.
TREHA® is produced with a proprietary enzymatic technology, and it has been given GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It’s also deemed Kosher- and Halal-certified and is Non-GMO Project-certified.
7 Ways to Trade up with TREHA®
Preparing foods with TREHA® can improve quality and freshness across service concepts, dayparts, menu categories and individual items. For example:
- Protect the integrity of fresh pasta, keeping it from drying out and becoming sticky at your customizable pasta bowl station.
- Maintain a vibrant color and structural integrity in both raw and boiled veggies on the buffet line.
- Significantly reduce the frequency of stock updates for grab-and-go items like sandwiches, wraps, rice bowls, snack packs, fruit cups and baked goods.
- Rely on TREHA® to maintain the quality of delivery/to-go items, such as by extending the crispiness of batter-fried foods or holding the moisture of cooked meats.
- Considered “the baker’s friend,” TREHA® does more than keep baked goods moist. For example, using it in the glaze on yeast-raised doughnuts more than doubles their shelf life.
- Salad bar greens soaked in a 3 percent TREHA® water bath for 30 minutes can maintain their just-cut crispness for days.
- Using TREHA® when stewing meats helps keep the broth from separating when thawed and preserves the meat’s moisture.
Faced With Less Waste
USDA estimates that 40 percent of some 199 billion pounds of annual food waste is generated by restaurants, grocery stores and other foodservice operations. This sobering statistic is giving rise to a customer-driven moral imperative to reduce waste up and down the supply chain, especially in restaurant kitchens. Of course, with rising costs of food and labor, waste reduction is also an economic priority for operators.
In response, many chefs are exploring strategies like upcycling, zero-waste menu planning, nose-to-tail butchery and so on. Considering its ability to improve texture, flavor and taste, TREHA® offers the opportunity to extend the menu life of a wide range of foods that typically might not last more than one service. “Food is regularly discarded if it’s not deemed 100 percent fresh the next day,” says Cook. Consider your menu and review the shelf life of your bakery items, dairy foods, dressings/sauces, produce, grains, meat/fish, snack foods and more. How might TREHA® impact your menu development choices and procurement planning?
Cook acknowledges that these are difficult questions to answer without a certain degree of initial trial and error. “Until you’ve tried working with any new product, you’re not going to be sure how it will work for you. I urge you to try TREHA® in your operation,” he says.
Indeed, seeing is believing and TREHA® is an ingredient that boasts benefits you’ll want to see for yourself. The TREHA® website is a terrific source of information, featuring downloadable Usage and Cost Savings charts, service category-specific tips, menu and recipe inspirations and more, including a way to contact the Nagase team to request samples.
Visit the TREHA® website to explore the opportunities.
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