Imagine a perfectly cooked chicken wing. Its crackling exterior yields to juicy, tender meat clinging to the bone. A crispy coated nugget with the right golden color and crunchy textured exterior that doesn’t flake off yields to a bite that’s not too hard or firm. A ready meal delivers the same quality every time. Its perfectly cooked (and reheated) bed of rice sits under vibrant, firm veggies in a flowing sauce that coats moist chunks of protein.
For consumers, these outcomes feel effortless. For food processors, they are anything but. Behind every cooked food product lies a constant balancing act between food safety, product quality, yield, throughput and energy consumption. Every decision – from cooking time and temperature to humidity and airflow – affects not only the final product but also energy use, water consumption and material losses. Improving one metric can often affect another.
At GEA, we believe the key to optimizing cooking performance is gaining deeper control and understanding of the cooking process itself.
Industrial cooking ‒ a balance of variables
Industrial cooking is one of the final and most critical steps in food production, influencing food safety, appearance, texture, yield and profitability. Production teams must manage variable raw materials, strict safety requirements and increasing operational pressure.
Some of the key challenges on the production floor include irregular raw materials. No two chicken breasts, broccoli heads – or other raw materials – are identical. “Raw material variability is unavoidable, but a well-designed process can accommodate differences in chicken breast size and thickness from batch to batch,” says Paul Verbruggen, Product Manager Heat Treatment at GEA Food Solutions. This variability can influence cooking performance and ultimately affect product quality, yield and consistency. For protein products especially, yield is also a resource efficiency issue. Retaining moisture and reducing unnecessary weight loss means getting more value from the same raw materials.
Many processors also face another challenge: Process knowledge often resides with a small number of experienced operators. Their expertise is invaluable, but it can be difficult to transfer, standardize and scale across an organization.
Moving beyond trial and error
For decades, food processors have successfully improved cooking processes through experience and practical know-how. That expertise remains essential. However, today's operating environment demands a more structured approach.
Quick fixes such as longer cook times or wider safety margins can gradually create conservative processes that consume more energy, increase moisture loss and limit capacity. Without a clear understanding of what is happening inside the cooking environment, teams react to issues rather than preventing them.
The science behind process control
Industrial cooking is fundamentally about managing heat transfer, moisture behavior and the interaction between multiple process parameters.
“Temperature is only one part of the equation,” says Verbruggen. “Humidity, air speed and cooking time also influence heat transfer, moisture retention, color, texture, yield and safety.”
One concept that is gaining increased attention is dew point – the measure of how much moisture is present in the cooking environment. Understanding dew point helps processors better predict heat transfer, condensation behavior, cooking speed and moisture retention. Combined with air speed and temperature management, it provides a much more complete understanding of the cooking process.
Putting cooking science into practice
Leading food manufacturers improve cooking performance by understanding the optimal operating window for each product. Rather than relying on broad safety margins, they design cooking profiles that adapt throughout the process.
“Different stages of cooking have different objectives,” says Verbruggen. “Early in the process you may want rapid heat transfer, while later stages may focus on color development or moisture retention. Multi-zone control allows you to manage those phases independently.”
Modern multi-zone cooking systems make this possible by applying different conditions throughout the cooking cycle to optimize heat transfer, moisture retention, color development and texture. The result is greater process control and improved overall performance.
At Gold Creek Foods in the United States, advanced cooking control using GEA CookStar options, helped balance product quality and yield objectives. “With both towers and the impingement section in the middle you are really able to deliver a high quality – high moisture and yield item while maintaining a good color,” says Don Dubnik, Vice President of Operations at Gold Creek Foods.
At Van Loon Group in the Netherlands, process optimization delivered improvements in both productivity and profitability. “We reduced the cook time of our wings from 22 to 19 minutes with the CookStar Gen 3, and on top we saved 2% on cook yield,” says Sander Krijnen, R&D Manager at Van Loon Group.
These examples demonstrate an important industry trend: When processors gain greater control over the cooking process, improvements often extend across multiple performance indicators simultaneously.
Combining expertise, technology and transparency
Helping processors gain greater control requires more than equipment alone. For more than three decades, GEA has worked alongside food manufacturers worldwide to improve cooking performance through a combination of process expertise, technology and knowledge transfer. This includes programs such as the GEA Cooking Masterclass, where food technologists help processors understand how cooking variables interact.
It also includes technologies such as the CookStar family of spiral ovens, which provide independent control of cooking zones and air speed conditions. GEA CookStar enables processors to adjust cooking conditions throughout the process, improving consistency, yield and energy performance. GEA CookStar First has earned the Add Better label for its energy- and water-saving features, demonstrating how improved process control can support more sustainable food production.
And increasingly, digital transparency and energy solutions such as heat recovery and steam reuse are helping processors reduce resource consumption further. Together, these capabilities support consistent production while helping manufacturers progress toward sustainability goals.
From compromise to control
Cooking objectives do not need to be viewed as unavoidable trade-offs. Combining practical experience with cooking science helps processors operate closer to optimal performance, reducing unnecessary losses and improving decision-making.
In an industry where efficiency, sustainability and consistency matter more than ever, control creates value across the entire operation. It allows processors to improve profitability, strengthen competitiveness and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving market.
The principles behind better cooking
Masters of Industrial Cooking
Learn how precise control of heat, humidity and airflow helps you improve food safety, quality, yield and energy efficiency in industrial cooking.
How to master Industrial Cooking
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The GEA CookStar at work
Discover how the GEA CookStar translates cooking science into real process control. Its engineered design helps balance food safety, product quality, yield, throughput and energy performance in practice.
The illustration to the left shows the interior of the GEA CookStar. It is a compact, industrial spiral oven designed for small to mid-sized food processing lines.
