Frozen Noodle Block with Inserted Sauce Portion
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing frozen noodle products do not achieve an excellent sense of unity between noodles and sauce when heated and cooked with a microwave oven, leading to texture issues and poor resilience.
Innovation Solution
A frozen food product comprising a main food portion with a sauce portion arranged such that a part of the sauce is inserted into an opening in the main food portion, allowing the sauce to project from the surface, ensuring even heating and improved texture when thawed and cooked.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the sauce portion is placed only on the surface of the main food portion, then the structure is simple, but the sense of unity between noodles and sauce is poor and texture is degraded
Solution Approach 1:
The sauce portion is inserted into an opening formed in the main food portion, creating a nested structure where the sauce is partially embedded within the noodle block. This nesting arrangement ensures close contact between sauce and noodles, providing an excellent sense of unity and smooth texture while maintaining a relatively simple overall structure.
2Reliability
If the sauce portion is completely inserted into the main food portion, then the sense of unity is excellent, but the sauce cannot project from the surface for proper serving
Solution Approach 1:
The sauce portion is arranged with differentiated positioning: part of it is inserted into the opening of the main food portion to ensure excellent contact and unity, while the remaining part projects from the sauce-portion arranging surface to facilitate proper serving. This local differentiation of the sauce portion's position resolves the contradiction between unity and serving convenience.
3Speed
If frozen food is heated in microwave oven without proper structure, then heating is fast, but heating is uneven and texture is poor
Solution Approach 1:
An opening is pre-formed in the main food portion before freezing, and the sauce portion is placed within this opening. This preliminary structural preparation enables uniform heat distribution during microwave heating, as the opening allows microwave penetration and the sauce insertion creates thermal pathways, achieving both fast heating and uniform temperature distribution with excellent texture.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The arrangement provides an excellent sense of unity between the noodles and sauce, with smooth texture and moderate resilience, enhancing the overall quality of the frozen noodle product.
Implementation Method 1
heated and cooked with a microwave oven
Implementation Method 2
The entire noodle block can be heated with minimal unevenness in a relatively short time
Implementation Method 3
obtained by freezing and hardening heated-and-cooked noodles
Implementation Method 4
freezing and hardening a cooked food
Data Source
AI summary
A frozen noodle product includes: a frozen noodle block, as a main food portion, obtained by freezing and hardening a cooked food; and a sauce portion obtained by freezing and hardening a sauce to be eaten together with the cooked food. The frozen noodle block has a sauce-portion arranging surface on which the sauce portion is arranged. An opening is formed in the sauce-portion arranging surface. The sauce portion is arranged on the frozen noodle block such that the lower end side, which is a part of the sauce portion, is inserted in the opening and the upper end side, which is the remaining part thereof, projects from the sauce-portion arranging surface side.