Ingredient Library

At Gourmet Kitchens, Inc. we never use artificial colors, flavors or preservatives in our products. We pride ourselves on using ingredients consumers use and recognize. Occasionally, we use an ingredient or an ingredient that isn’t found on most store shelves. Though not artificial, we still thought we’d explain how we use them in our products.

Citric Acid: It’s a natural preservative found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, mostly in citrus fruits like oranges, limes and lemons. It’s widely used in the food industry as a natural preservative or to provide an acidic flavor in food.

Sodium Lactate: It’s the natural salt of lactic acid (a natural occurring acid) and it’s used to help preserve products and as a flavor enhancer so it allows you to reduce the amount of salt needed to provide a salty taste.

Maltodextrin: it’s a sweet polysaccharide, meaning that is a small chain of “sugar” molecules linked together. It comes from any source of starch so it can be from potato, wheat, corn, rice, etc. It’s used in the food industry to provide sweet taste without having to use as much as if you were adding just sugar.

Carrageenan: This is a thickener extracted from seaweed used in the food industry to provide texture and viscosity by forming a gel.

Xanthan Gum: This gum is produced by fermenting a sugar with the microorganism Xanthomonas campestris. Same as with carrageenan it increases viscosity and provides texture to liquids, it is very common in dressings since this gum has the ability to be very thick when the product is at rest but thins out (or viscosity is reduced) when subjected to excessive movement like shaking but once it comes to rest again it thickens trapping particles like spices in the middle of the liquid so ingredients don’t separate.

Enzyme: In order to make cheese, the proteins in milk need to be “cut down” or digested so they precipitate and the solid form can be used to make cheese. Proteolytic enzymes are responsible for hydrolyzing or breaking down casein (a milk protein) to separate it from the whey in order to make cheese.

Modified Food Starch: it’s a food additive used as thickener, stabilizer or emulsifier and it is made by treating regular starch with acids or enzymes in order to partially degrade the starch, thus increasing certain characteristics such as stability at high temperatures, resistance to freezing, shortening gelatinization times without heating and so on. The same is true for Modified Corn Starch.

Stabilizer: This is a starch blend used to give texture and increase viscosity (thickness). Potassium Chloride and Magnesium Carbonate are used to stabilize the starch.

Disodium Inosinate/Guanylate: These are flavor enhancers. They work together with glutamic acid to impart the umami taste. No MSG needs to be added in order to work, as long as there is a secondary source of glutamic acid. They work together to bring out the natural flavor of the product.

Hydrolized Protein: Proteins are made of amino acids, so when a protein is hydrolyzed it means that it has been subjected to some treatment (most commonly enzymatic or heat based) to break it down into amino acids, when present in food, it acts as a flavor enhancer.