Sandwich from the refrigerated shelf: durability – these are the tricks of the industry

Can be kept for weeks
This is what lies behind the industrial sandwiches from the refrigerated shelf

Freshly filled breads are delicious – and yet they have one problem: Unfortunately, they don’t stay fresh for long. Whether toast or bread: In the end, the slice is damp and the topping is mushy. But the industry has managed to get filled toast sandwiches into kiosks, gas stations and supermarket shelves that are supposed to stay fresh for a week or more. How can that work?

Food expert Sebastian Lege does the test for “ZDF” and takes a closer look at the miracle breads from the refrigerated shelf. To do this, he opens one of the test sandwich packaging. “Smells sour,” was his first impression. Indeed, the cheese is already decomposing the toast. It doesn’t look really tasty anymore. However: Even after days in the plastic packaging, the sandwich is still edible. Clever development work by industry makes it possible.

Pressed meat in toast form

Noticeable: there are quite a few pickles on the sandwich. With good reason, so lay. Because: “Microorganisms don’t like acids,” says the expert. “Acid products have an infinite shelf life.” In this case, the pickles have a preservative effect.

In order to uncover all the tricks of the industry, the expert wants to recreate a chicken breast sandwich. But the meat is expensive and misshapen. So it should be turned into a kind of molded meat ham. To do this, the expert dips the chicken breast salt, phosphate, ice and some water into a machine that works like a washing machine with negative pressure. As a result, more water and the phosphate seeps into the meat, making it not only heavier, but also soft and sticky. The meat is then pressed overnight, then vacuum-sealed and cooked. The result: perfect shaped meat that fits exactly on the sandwich.

It is made difficult for consumers to recognize such pressed and glued meat. On the packaging there are descriptions such as “put together from pieces of turkey breast”. Behind it is the industrially glued meat.

The trick with the toast

Toasted bread doesn’t keep very long, Sebastian Lege knows that too. He visits a master baker who makes toast according to a traditional recipe. But Lege wants to make toast with an extra long shelf life. In addition to the classic ingredients flour, water, yeast and salt, he needs another ingredient: Sodium acetate. This colorless but slightly acidic salt of acetic acid lowers the pH value in food and makes it long-lasting. The substance can also be found in ready-made delicatessen salads and dressings and in almost all toasts from the supermarket.

For his own industrial toast, Lege only uses the aroma instead of real butter and dips cheap cooking oil into the dough. The butter aroma has another advantage: it cannot go rancid. Yeast is also a substitute; sourdough would be far too complex and expensive for cheap industrial bread.

An industrial sandwich is created

At the end, Lege assembles the sandwich: the dry pressed meat, the industrially manufactured toast – and of course a cream. It usually looks like mayonnaise, but has nothing to do with it. Put the pureed soy milk with the cutting stick and slowly pour in the oil. At the end he receives a firm cream that is very reminiscent of mayonnaise – but nothing more. Since it does not contain a raw egg, the cream can be kept for weeks.

When topping, it is important that the pores of the toasted bread slice are completely closed with the fat cream, because “we want to create an insulating layer,” says Lege. This is the only way to prevent something from going bad. The finished sandwich can then be kept for “several weeks”.

You can view the article in the media library here.

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