Potential applications of protective cultures in cook-chill catering

Extended shelf-life cook-chill technology is widely used by modern food services. However, it poses a number of food safety risks. There is a limited choice of suitable preservation methods for applications in catering. Bacteriocinogenic protective cultures (PCs) offer temperature-responsive preservation and a ‘natural’ image. The knowledge of the dynamic of inhibition and factors effecting it is needed to ‘design’ products protected by this method. The suggested protocol for PC applications covers the inhibition enhancing strategies and possible ways of protecting PCs during processing.