COOKING BAGS… Sirane offers a huge range of them. Different formats, different materials, different options. So, what are the differences and what should guide your choice on how you decide on that right bag? And can cooking bags be used to add real value to your retail food sales? Let’s take a look at the options…
One of the most straightforward is the oven bag. Sirane offers oven bags (and flow-wrap films) made from two different materials, polyester and nylon. These bags can be made in a range of sizes, including ‘chicken bags’ and ‘turkey bags’.
They are easy to use. The food – the oven bags can be used for whole birds, seafood including whole fish and more – is simply placed in the bag, which is sealed or tied. We can supply ties with the bags if required. All the customer needs to do is pierce the top of the bag before it goes in the oven, allowing the steam to escape.
Oven bags offer many advantages to the consumer, including reduced cooking times and keeping all the juices and flavour in the bag (so the meat doesn’t dry out.
One question we’re often asked is what’s the difference between polyester and nylon oven bags? Maximum temperature is one main difference, polyester can be cooked in an oven at up to 180OC, while nylon can be cooked at up to 210OC.
Nylon can also be cooked sous-vide and then oven-roasted using the same oven bag.
Nylon is a stronger, tougher, more durable material. Tear resistant. But everything comes at a cost, and nylon oven bags are more expensive than polyester. Perhaps the easiest way to look at the difference is as a standard/premium oven bag.
Polyester oven bags can be supplied from material made from 30% post-consumer recycled materials. We can also supply polyester oven bags pre-folded and wrapped, so they are suitable for inclusion as part of ready meals, meal kits etc.
We also offer polyester foil-edged film – not so much a cooking bag, it is supplied on reels rather than as individual bags, but is great for butcher’s counters etc. The food is placed inside and then the film simply cut to size, and twisted at both ends.
Another popular cooking bag format produced by Sirane is our steam-cooking bags, which can be used in both the oven and the microwave.
Particularly good for seafood, vegetables and fruit-based desserts, they can be supplied in a number of formats including both heat-seal and self-seal. This gives them real versatility as a packaging format – retailers can choose to deliver them in to store pre-packed, or pack and fill on demand behind the counter. We’ve got customers using them for everything from fish sales to grab and go meals.
By adding flavoured butters or glazes, it’s easy to add value to retail sales using a steam-cooking bag, and we can even supply them with double compartments which can be separated and cooked separately (in cases where either the cooking times are different, or you just don’t want the contents combined for some reason).
We also offer steam-cooking bags as stand-up pouches – giving extra shelf-appeal.
Steam-cooking bags will vent during the cooking process – the steam has to be released somehow – and if you want to control exactly where it vents, then we also offer that as an option too – in the form of our Sira-Vent bags.
All of our steam-cooking bags can be supplied custom printed/branded. Often the print is used for cooking instructions, which can help the custom take the guess work out of cooking. This can be particularly beneficial with fish, for example, which often scares customers as they don’t really know what to do with it or how to cook it. By printing the instructions, it becomes simple, you tell them exactly how to cook it.
We were the first company worldwide – to the best of our knowledge – to offer cooking bags printed using only ovenable water-based inks.
Our oven/BBQ bags are another cooking bag format which has proved popular. Available in a range of sizes, they can be cooked in the oven, on an open BBQ, or even on a griddle or hot-plate. BBQ bags can be supplied with a siliconized layer, which is ideal for cooking seafood, as it will stop the fish sticking to the bag.
This siliconized layer offers additional opportunities however, as we can perforate the layer and then place flavoured wood chips and and/or herbs/spices below the layer, which flavour and enhance the food during the cooking process.
Our Earthpouch Supreme is an ovenable cooking bag with a difference, as it a paper-based barrier pouch which can be recycled in the paper recycling stream. It can be used to cook/heat items such as garlic bread, filled baguettes etc. and can also be used in airline/travel catering, as a sustainable ovenable packaging alternative.
Cooking bags can be functional packaging – which happens to be ovenable – but they can be so much more, offering genuine ways to add value to retail food sales. There’s lots of choices, but our sales team would be happy to guide you through them.
MARK LINGARD, MARKETING MANAGER
