Last Updated on March 19, 2024 by Yoyo
In today’s fast-paced life, premade meals and ready-to-eat foods have deeply penetrated our daily lives and become an important part of our daily diet. We pick them casually on supermarket shelves or enjoy them hastily on busy workdays, but do you really understand the difference between them? In fact, many people may not fully understand the definitions and characteristics of these two modern foods, and their understanding of their packaging requirements may be even less. As a food manufacturer, if you want to enter the premade food market, you might need to choose a more appropriate packaging solution.
Table of Contents
What is Ready-to-eat Food
Ready-to-eat food (RTE) refers to food that can be eaten immediately without cleaning, heating, or cooking. In simple terms, you can enjoy it immediately after you unwrap the package. We are familiar with, for example, beef jerky, cheese, pickles, and various snacks on supermarket shelves, which are all ready-to-eat foods.
What are Ready-to-cook Food
Ready-to-cook food (RTC), often also called premade meals or premade food. Their categories are very rich, from traditional seasoned steaks, frozen dumplings, etc., to self-heating foods (hot pots, rice) that have become popular in recent years, all belong to RTC food. Their feature is that you must eat them after a simple cooking. However, if you are a cooking novice, you don’t have to worry about failure. Because this level of cooking is very simple (usually just need simple heating, the flavor has been blended), and the required heating temperature and time will be printed on the packaging, you are unlikely to miss or mess up.
Difference Between the Two
When talking about ready-to-eat foods and ready-to-cook foods, we need to understand the differences between them. Below is a detailed table showing the main features of the two:
| Features | Ready-to-eat Food | Ready-to-cook Food |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Ready-to-eat foods are that can be eaten directly after unwrapping. | Ready-to-cook food is made from one or more ingredients as the main raw material needs processing or cooking to be consumed. |
| Processing Degree | No additional processing is required, can be eaten directly. | Can be eaten only after heating, cooking and other processing. |
| Examples | Ready-to-eat cheese, canned food, deli food, etc. | Ready-to-Cook foods such as frozen dumplings, semi-finished vegetables, prepared hot pot ingredients, seasoned steaks. |
| Preservation Method | Usually need to be refrigerated or frozen for storage, shorter shelf life. | Preserved by rapid freezing technology or other preservation technologies, longer shelf life. |
| Applicable Scene | Suitable for a busy life or oral gratification. | Suitable for home cooking, restaurants, takeaways and other scenarios. |
| Food Safety | Need to pay attention to food safety, avoid eating expired. | Need to pay attention to the processing technology of food, the choice of raw materials, etc., to ensure food safety. |
| Flexibility | Usually not very flexible, limited and fixed flavors and ingredients. | More flexible, can be adjusted according to personal taste and needs. |
In fact, the definitions between ready-to-eat foods and ready-to-cook foods are sometimes vague. Like cheese, pickles, sausages and other ready-to-eat foods, you can make them more delicious by further simple cooking, or add flavor to other dishes. And to the instant noodles, it needs to be simply heated with water, but you can also eat it directly; more often we also consider it a ready-to-eat food.
Packaging Requirements for Ready Meals
For food safety considerations, no matter which country, the requirements for food packaging are rigorous. For ready-to-eat foods, their packaging must ensure that the food will not spoil or change taste during the shelf life; it would be better if it is also a renewable eco-friendly material.
The packaging requirements for ready-to-cook foods will be higher. Because most of the time, it must be directly involved in the cooking process.
Take cup noodles as an example. Since it needs to fill the water and heat, the paper container will add a waterproof PE coating to the inner wall to prevent water leakage. This coating must ensure that it will not release substances that affect health or harm the human body when heated. Finally, it should not increase the burden on paper recycling.
The popular premade dishes in recent years have mostly adopted plastic bag packaging, which is convenient for direct boiling in water for a longer time. Like self-heating hot pots and self-heating rice, its plastic containers must also be able to withstand the high temperature produced by the heating bag. As far as it is, they are all doing well. The only problem is, as we all know, plastic is not the most ideal eco-friendly packaging material, especially after it directly participates in the cooking process of food.
So, is there a better choice for premade food packaging?
A disposable aluminum foil food packaging container might be a good choice.
Aikou’s Premade Food Packaging
Aikou’s disposable eco-friendly aluminum foil food containers have the following advantages:
- Made from food-grade safe and recyclable aluminum foil
- Dust-free GMP-compliant production workshop production and packaging, free from pollution
- Excellent isolation performance can be obtained through heat sealing, thereby maintaining food flavor and preventing spoilage
- Large capacity and stronger than plastic containers
- Can be used directly for various cooking methods, such as microwaving, steaming, boiling, baking, naked fire heating, freezing, induction cooker, electric pottery stove, etc.
- Customized design to meet various needs of your brand and product
- Beautiful appearance, enhancing your shelf appeal
In addition to being more environmentally friendly, the biggest advantage of aluminum foil food containers over plastic food ones in ready-to-cook packaging is that they are more sturdy.
Especially when enjoying the currently popular self-heating foods. The plastic box itself is relatively soft, and after heating, although it will not melt, its wall will become softer. When you want to pour out the hot wastewater, you must be very careful to avoid scalding yourself. After consumption, the discarded plastic box also occupies a large space in the trash can, while for a disposable aluminum foil container, you can easily crumple it into a ball, which is more convenient to handle.
Generally, self-heating premade meals use a heating bag solution. This can indeed produce enough heat for food in a container of ordinary capacity, and can even cook rice. However, the heat produced by this scheme is still very limited, and it is very time-consuming. When facing large-capacity premade meals, such as hot pots, it seems powerless. Not to mention, without enough heat, meat cannot produce a Maillard reaction, and get a more attractive aroma and flavor.
Aikou once designed a packaging solution for a hot pot brand’s customer. Use our disposable large-capacity heat-sealing aluminum foil container as the packaging for hot pot ingredients, and give away a simple folding rack and solid alcohol lamp. Consumers only need to tear off part of the aluminum foil lid, fill in water, then set it up with a rack, and then light the solid alcohol lamp at the bottom for heating. In this way, you can enjoy hot food like a real hot pot. Of course, you can also put the container directly on the induction cooker or gas stove for heating after filling the water, absorbing more sufficient heat.
It can be seen that the aluminum foil food packaging container is a more excellent choice as the packaging for premade foods. If you have any plans to tap into the premade food market, you can contact us, Aikou’s professional team can provide you with a reliable solution.
