International innovations from SIAL 2018
Taste returns to the menu in new products spotlighted at the Paris food show.
Premium fresh poultry
Maitre CoQ was founded in 1969 in Vendee, France. The company is currently one of the top French poultry brands, with all products focused on three key principles: well-fed, well-raised and well-prepared poultry. Three innovations were showcased at SIAL 2018. The Organic Confit Poultry Legs are slow-cooked for hours with a special spice blend of ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. The fully cooked refrigerated product can be warmed in the oven or microwave. There’s a new convenience meal of fully cooked chicken and potatoes in portion packs for one and two people. Lastly, the company is rolling out a turkey wellington kit for the home cook. The portioned, prepared ingredients include a marinated turkey breast, stuffing and an all-butter puff pastry.
Heat-and-eat better-for-you chicken cuts
Trust My Chicken from the namesake company located in The Netherlands, is a frozen line of fully cooked natural chicken cuts, ready to heat. The product is free from artificial flavors, preservatives and gluten.
Sensory-enhanced chicken filets
Doux Mini Chicken Filets are made with marinated white meat that is coated in a breading mix made of millet, flax, pumpkin and black onion seeds. The seeds provide visual appeal, while contributing flavor, texture and nutrition, mainly in the form of healthy omega-3 fatty acids.
Frozen burger innovations
Nice to Meat International, The Netherlands, is rolling out frozen burger kits containing two 180-g. ground steak patties, two buns and a sauce packet. Veal Creations, also headquartered in The Netherlands, offers a range of innovative clean-label and convenience products, including the frozen Urban Share Steak Burger, which is a giant 2.3-lb. beef and veal burger ready for the grill. It’s intended to be cut and shared.
Better-for-you burgers
Veal Creations now offers veal and vegetable burgers, which are breaded veal patties stuffed with a vegetable filling. They are sold frozen in packs of two and come in four varieties — aubergine (eggplant), broccoli, spinach and traditional (mixed vegetables). From France’s Loste Grand Saloir is a new refrigerated organic French beef burger on a bun. Sold in individual units, the fully cooked sandwich is microwaveable.
Specialty meats: Rabbit
France’s Loeul et Piriot is rolling out minced rabbit wrapped in smoked pork breast and Emmental cheese. The product states that the rabbit was born, raised and slaughtered in France and was fed a 100 percent plant-based non-GMO diet. The company also offers the same responsibly raised rabbit in various trimmed cuts ready for cooking.
Meat and poultry snacks
New Chicks & Sport is a line of fully cooked chicken cubes in single-serve snack packs from Merzdorf Fine Food, Poland. Austria’s Handl Tyrol is rolling out a line of dried beef chips.
New forms of chorizo
Chorizo gets snackified by Embutidos Ortiz, Spain, which offers chorizo blended with quinoa and algae in shelf-stable snacking sticks. La Pila Food S.A., also of Spain, offers seasoned refrigerated chorizo slices that can be microwaved and served as tapas
Specialty meats: Frog and foie gras
Francaise de Gastronomie, France, is rolling out fully cooked seasoned frozen frog legs. Just in time for holiday entertaining, Labeyrie Fine Food, also of France, now offers do-it-yourself foie gras kits.
