All the latest news on current and past research into food chilling from the Food Refrigeration & Process Engineering Research Centre (FRPERC).

Chilling is a long established food preservation process that produces high quality nutritious foods with a relatively short storage life. In general, the term chilling refers to the process in which the temperature of the food is reduced to a low temperature above its freezing point but below the ambient, while the term chilled is used to describe the subsequent state the food is kept in, i.e. the maintenance of the food at that temperature during the rest of the cold-chain.

Current developed food chilling technologies encompass air blast, contact/plate, immersion and spray chilling systems.  Although often considered a separate technology cryogenics can be considered to be a sub field of blast, immersion or spray, depending on how the cryogen is used and the method of application.  Most of these technologies have been with us since the 1960s and although there have been improvements these technologies have essentially remained the same since then.

Find out more about chilling in our publications, articles and links below.  A full list of our publications on cold chain topics can be found here. For more about our past work on this topic please read our research reviews on primary chilling, secondary chilling, chilled storage, chilled transport, retail display and domestic storage.