Convenience foods

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Convenience foods

Answer 1

Frozen vegetables

Frozen vegetables are vegetables that have had their temperature reduced and maintained to below their freezing point for the purpose of storage and transportation (often for far longer than their natural shelf life would permit) until they are ready to be eaten. They may be commercially packaged or frozen at home. A wide range of frozen vegetables are sold in supermarkets.

Examples of frozen vegetables which can be found in supermarkets include spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, corn, yam (in Asia) either packaged as a single ingredient or as mixtures. There are occasions when frozen vegetables are mixed with other food types, such as pasta or cheese.

Some popular brands include Birds Eye Sunbulah and Green Giant as well as supermarkets 'own brand' items.

Frozen vegetables have some advantages over fresh ones, in that they are available when the fresh counterpart is out-of-season, they have a very long shelf life when kept in a freezer and that they often have been processed a step or more closer to eating. In many cases, they may be more economical to purchase than their fresh counterparts.

In general, boiling vegetables can cause them to lose vitamins. Thus, the process of blanching does have deleterious effects on some nutrients. In particular, vitamin C and folic acid are susceptible to loss during the commercial process, and canned or frozen broccoli for instance loses the entirety of its most valuable nutrient. In addition, studies have shown that thawing frozen vegetables before cooking can accelerate the loss of vitamin C.

Over the years, there has been controversy as to whether frozen vegetables are better or worse than fresh ones. Generally, reports show that frozen vegetables are as nutritionally beneficial when compared to fresh ones.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 2

Granola

Granola is a breakfast food and snack food consisting of rolled oats, nuts, honey or other sweeteners such as brown sugar, and sometimes puffed rice, that is usually baked until it is crisp, toasted and golden brown. During the baking process, the mixture is stirred to maintain a loose breakfast cereal consistency. Dried fruit, such as raisins and dates, and confections such as chocolate are sometimes added. Granola, particularly if it includes flax seeds, is often used to improve digestion. Granola is often eaten in combination with yogurt, honey, fresh fruit (such as bananas, strawberries or blueberries), milk or other forms of cereal. It also serves as a topping for various pastries, desserts or ice cream.

Besides its use as a breakfast and snack food, granola may also be eaten for an evening meal and by those who are hiking, camping, or backpacking because it is nutritious, lightweight, high in calories, and easy to store (properties that make it similar to trail mix and muesli). As a snack, it is often combined and condensed into a bar form that makes it easy to carry for packed lunches, hiking, or other outdoor activities.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 3

Jerky

Jerky is lean meat that has been trimmed of fat, cut into strips, and then dried to prevent spoilage. Normally, this drying includes the addition of salt, to prevent bacteria from developing on the meat before sufficient moisture has been removed. The word "jerky" is derived from the Quechua word ch'arki which means "dried, salted meat". All that is needed to produce basic "jerky" is a low-temperature drying method, and salt to inhibit bacterial growth.

Modern manufactured jerky is normally marinated in a seasoned spice rub or liquid, and dried, dehydrated or smoked with low heat (usually under 70 °C/160 °F). Some product manufacturers finely grind meat, mix in seasonings, and press the meat-paste into flat shapes prior to drying.

The resulting jerky from the above methods would be a salty and/or savory snack. However, often a sweet or semi-sweet recipe is used, with sugar being a major ingredient (in contrast to biltong which is a dried meat product that utilizes the acid in vinegar rather than salt to inhibit bacterial growth when drying the meat). Jerky is ready-to-eat and needs no additional preparation. It can be stored for months without refrigeration. When the protein to moisture content ratio is correct, the resulting meat is cured, or preserved.

There are many products in the marketplace which are sold as jerky which consist of highly processed, chopped and formed meat, rather than traditional sliced, whole-muscle meat. These products may contain more fat, but moisture content, like the whole-muscle product, must meet a 0.75 to 1 moisture to protein ratio in the US. Chemical preservatives can be used to prevent oxidative spoilage, but the moisture to protein ratio prevents microbial spoilage by low water activity. Many jerky products are very high in sugar and are therefore very sweet, unlike biltong, which rarely contains added sugars.

A typical 30 g portion of fresh jerky contains 10–15 g of protein, 1 g of fat, and 0–3 g of carbohydrates, although some beef jerky can have more than 65% of protein content. Since traditional jerky recipes use a basic salt cure, sodium can be a concern for some people. A 30 g serving of jerky could contain more than 600 mg of sodium, which would be about 30% of the recommended USRDA.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 4

List of snack foods

This is a list of snack foods in alphabetical order by type and name. A snack is a small portion of food eaten between meals. This may be a snack food, such as potato chips or baby carrots, but can also simply be a small amount of any food.

Many cultures have dishes that are prepared by cooking batter and deep frying dough in many various forms.

Confectionery is related to food items that are rich in sugar and often referred to as confections. Confectionery refers to the art of creating sugar based dessert forms, or subtleties (subtlety or sotelty), often with pastillage.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 5

Macaroni and cheese

Macaroni and cheese

Macaroni and cheese—also called mac and cheese in American, Canadian, and macaroni pie in Caribbean English; and macaroni cheese in the United Kingdom—is a dish of English origin, consisting of cooked macaroni pasta and a cheese sauce, most commonly cheddar. It can also incorporate other ingredients, such as bread crumbs, meat and vegetables.

Traditional macaroni and cheese is a casserole baked in the oven; however, it may be prepared in a sauce pan on top of the stove or using a packaged mix. The cheese is often first incorporated into a Béchamel sauce (milk gravy) to give a Mornay sauce which is then added to the pasta. In the United States it is considered a comfort food.

Pasta and cheese casseroles have been recorded as early as the 14th century in the Italian cookbook, Liber de Coquina, one of the oldest medieval cookbooks, which featured a dish of parmesan and pasta. A cheese and pasta casserole known as makerouns was recorded in the famous medieval English cookbook, the Forme of Cury, which was also written in the 14th century. It was made with fresh, hand-cut pasta which was sandwiched between a mixture of melted butter and cheese. The recipe given (in Middle English) was "Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh. and kerve it on peces, and cast hem on boillyng water & seeþ it wele. take chese and grate it and butter cast bynethen and above as losyns. and serue forth." ("Make a thin foil of dough and cut it in pieces. Put them in boiling in water and them well. Grate cheese and add it with butter beneath and above as with losyns [a dish similar to lasagne], and serve.")

The first modern recipe for the dish was included in cookery writer Elizabeth Raffald's 1770 book, The Experienced English Housekeeper. Raffald's recipe is for a Béchamel sauce with cheddar cheese—a Mornay sauce in French cooking—which is mixed with macaroni, sprinkled with Parmesan, and baked until bubbly and golden. The famous British Victorian cookbook Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management included two recipes for the dish. One recipe states that "The macaroni, (which should be "tender but perfectly firm, no part being allowed to melt, and the form entirely preserved" – lest one be tempted to cook it for so long it actually disintegrated) is then topped with more cheese, pepper and breadcrumbs, before receiving a final dose of melted butter for good measure and being placed before a "bright fire" to brown the crumbs, or grilled with a salamander broiler.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 6

National Association of Concessionaires

...

Wikipedia

Answer 7

National Independent Concessionaires Association

...

Wikipedia

Answer 8

Peanut

Peanut, valencia, raw

The peanut, also known as the groundnut and the goober and taxonomically classified as Arachis hypogaea, is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, being important to both small and large commercial producers. It is classified as both a grain legume and, because of its high oil content, an oil crop. World annual production of shelled peanuts was 42 million tonnes in 2014. Atypically among crop plants, peanut pods develop underground rather than aboveground. It is this characteristic that the botanist Linnaeus used to assign the specific name hypogaea, which means "under the earth."

As a legume, the peanut belongs to the botanical family Fabaceae; this is also known as Leguminosae, and commonly known as the bean, or pea, family. Like most other legumes, peanuts harbor symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in root nodules. This capacity to fix nitrogen means peanuts require less nitrogen-containing fertilizer and improve soil fertility, making them valuable in crop rotations.

Peanuts are similar in taste and nutritional profile to tree nuts such as walnuts and almonds, and are often served in similar ways in Western cuisines. The botanical definition of a "nut" is a fruit whose ovary wall becomes very hard at maturity. Using this criterion, the peanut is not a true nut, but rather a legume. However, for culinary purposes and in common English language usage, peanuts are usually referred to as nuts.

Cultivated peanut (A. hypogaea) arose from a hybrid between two wild species of peanut, thought to be A. duranensis and A. ipaensis. The initial hybrid would have been sterile, but spontaneous chromosome doubling restored its fertility, forming what is termed an amphidiploid or allotetraploid. Genetic analysis suggests the hybridization event probably occurred only once and gave rise to A. monticola, a wild form of peanut that occurs in a few restricted locations in northwestern Argentina, and by artificial selection to A. hypogaea. The process of domestication through artificial selection made A. hypogaea dramatically different from its wild relatives. The domesticated plants are bushier and more compact, and have a different pod structure and larger seeds. The initial domestication may have taken place in northwestern Argentina, or in southeastern Bolivia, where the peanut landraces with the most wild-like features are grown today. From this primary center of origin, cultivation spread and formed secondary and tertiary centers of diversity in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Over time, thousands of peanut landraces evolved; these are classified into six botanical varieties and two subspecies (as listed in the peanut scientific classification table). Subspecies A. h. fastigiata types are more upright in their growth habit and have shorter crop cycles. Subspecies A. h. hypogaea types spread more on the ground and have longer crop cycles.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 9

Pizza

Pizza

Pizza is a yeasted flatbread generally topped with tomato sauce and cheese and baked in an oven. It is commonly topped with a selection of meats, vegetables and condiments. The term was first recorded in the 10th century, in a Latin manuscript from Gaeta in Central Italy. The modern pizza was invented in Naples, Italy, and the dish and its variants have since become popular and common in many areas of the world.

In 2009, upon Italy's request, Neapolitan pizza was safeguarded in the European Union as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed dish. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (the True Neapolitan Pizza Association) is a non-profit organization founded in 1984 with headquarters in Naples. It promotes and protects the "true Neapolitan pizza".

Pizza is sold fresh or frozen, either whole or in portions, and is a common fast food item in Europe and North America. Various types of ovens are used to cook them and many varieties exist. Several similar dishes are prepared from ingredients commonly used in pizza preparation, such as calzone and stromboli.

The word "pizza" (Italian: [ˈpittsa]) first appeared in a Latin text from the southern Italy town of Gaeta, then still part of the Byzantine Empire, in 997 AD; the text states that a tenant of certain property is to give the bishop of Gaeta duodecim pizze ("twelve pizzas") every Christmas Day, and another twelve every Easter Sunday".

Suggested etymologies include:

Foods similar to pizza have been made since the neolithic age. Records of people adding other ingredients to bread to make it more flavorful can be found throughout ancient history. The ancient Greeks covered their bread with oils, herbs and cheese, and in the 6th century BC, the soldiers in Persian King Darius I's armies baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields.

...

Wikipedia

Answer 10

Pop-Tarts

Pop-Tarts

Pop-Tarts is a brand of rectangular, pre-baked, convenience food toaster pastries that the Kellogg Company introduced in 1964. Pop-Tarts have a sugary filling sealed inside two layers of rectangular, thin pastry crust. Most varieties are also frosted. Although sold pre-cooked, they are designed to be warmed inside a toaster or microwave oven. They are usually sold in pairs inside Mylar (previously foil) packages and do not require refrigeration.

Pop-Tarts is Kellogg's most popular brand to date in the United States, with millions of units sold each year. They are distributed mainly in the United States, but also in Canada, Finland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand. Pop-Tarts was discontinued in Australia in 2005 and brought back in 2014 with two flavors: Strawberry Sensation and Chocotastic.

Pop-Tarts are produced in dozens of flavors, plus various one-time, seasonal, and "limited edition" flavors that appear for a short time.

Similar to Pop-Tarts is the Toaster Strudels brand, which launched in 1985 and are now a major competitor, in that they are about the same size and shape and are intended as a breakfast food and snack that is warmed in a bread toaster. However, Pop-Tarts, being based on tart-style pastries, are thinner, do not need to be refrigerated, and the crust has very different texture and flavor. Toaster Strudel is based on a strudel-style pastry; additionally, the icing melts at a much lower temperature and is user-applied.

In the 1960s, Post adapted its process for enclosing food in foil to keep it fresh without spoiling—first used for dog food—to its new toaster-prepared breakfast food. Intended to complement its cold cereals, Post announced its new product to the press in 1963 before they went to market. Post called them "Country Squares".

Because Post had revealed Country Squares before they were ready to be put in the marketplace, Post's biggest competitor, Kellogg, was able to develop its own version in six months. The product, advertised by an animated, anthropomorphic toaster named Milton, became so popular that Kellogg could not keep up with demand.

...

Wikipedia