How do fruit canning companies get the skins off mandarin orange segments?
Ok, here’s the scoop on the canned mandarin sections. This is from Kevin Gaffney, microbiologist at Florida’s Natural and adjunct professor of citrus processing here at Florida Southern College. Kevin says that mandarins are first scalded (in hot water) to loosen the peel, then they are soaked in a lye solution, which digests away the albedo and membranes. Then the sections are washed in several rinses of plain water to clean them up. This may account for why the canned mandarin segments I’ve eaten recently have had added citric acid. That lye bath would change the pH enough that what would otherwise be sufficiently acid would move too close to neutral. http://forums.gardenweb.com/…/…914335427171.
