Smokey BBQ Sauce – Natural Preservative Challenge

Background

Every day, consumers make it clear: they want foods with simpler labels made from understandable ingredients without giving up any part of the quality eating experience they're used to. Burger King is no different and challenged the team to make their ambient BBQ Sauce NAFNAF (No Artificial Flavours, No Artificial Colours) and No Artificial Preservatives.

Typically this type of sauce is pH controlled and contains artificial preservatives to enable it to be stored at ambient temperature and give it a long shelf life (12 – 18 months).

Challenges

Their Smokey BBQ sauce is a signature sauce and any changes to the recipe had to be made without adversely affecting the flavour or colour of the finished product. i.e. there should be no noticeable difference. To test this the finished product would undergo store trials across 2 restaurants for 6 weeks. To pass the store trial there had to be no complaints that the sauce had changed.

To add to this the product needed to have at least a 9 month shelf life.

Hot filling, or aseptic filling, was not an option here as the manufacturing facilities required were not available. It was decided that Natural Preservatives were the best option to progress with and a strict microbial challenge study* was outlined by head office in the USA. It was soon evident that the bacteria cultures required to undertake the challenge study, were not available in New Zealand.

*A microbial challenge study is a laboratory study in which a food product is artificially-inoculated with pertinent pathogenic or spoilage microorganisms in order to determine their behavior in the product; and thus whether those organisms present a risk to the microbial safety or quality of the product.

Solution 

Replacing the artificial colours and flavours was a straightforward process. There are lots of natural equivalents readily available.

Our suppliers were very generous in sharing their knowledge on Natural Preservative technology. One in particular had access to a team of scientists who specialise in Food Microbiology & Modelling. A bonus here, was they also had access to the required testing cultures at their facility in Europe!

Following some initial kitchen testing to understand the impact on taste and colour, a combination of natural preservatives was chosen to progress with. Predictive modelling tools and calculators for food preservation and safety were then utlised to tweak the recipe (amounts of natural preservatives and acid) to give the optimal chance of success.

Sauce samples were then produced under strict conditions and sent to Europe to undergo the microbial challenge study.

Results

After 6 months of microbial testing the results were very promising and the store trials were initiated. There were no complaints and any differences were deemed negligible. The new recipe was approved by Burger King. This was not launched as such but a soft change to the recipe was taken as the best approach.