Résumé
Immersion chilling and freezing (ICF) in aqueous refrigerating media consists in soaking foodstuffs in a cooled aqueous solution. Binary brine solutions (sodium chloride, calcium chloride) are generally used, with less frequent ternary or more complex solutions such as water+salt+ethanol or water+sugars. The advantages claimed for ICF include shorter processing times, energy savings and improved food quality when compared with air-blast chilling and freezing techniques. This freezing technique nevertheless has a limited range of applications since it has not been fully developed yet, in particular because of the problem of uncontrolled penetration of solutes into the food material, The present chapter reviews recent advances, which have brought further understanding of the multicomponent mass transfer during the ICF process, and properties of the refrigerating media at low temperatures. These advances should be of practical benefit, leading to possible new applications in the chilled and frozen food sector. The present chapter also reviews the different equipment designed for the process and recommendations for adequate implementation of ICF at the industrial scale. (Résumé d'auteur)