How Snackworthy Corn Puff Snacks are made
From manufacturing to your pantry! A behind-the-scenes look at our award-winning Snackworthy Corn Puff Snacks.
Ever wondered how snack companies develop new products? There are many steps to the development process. The chain of events often begins with a customer request or a new concept from the sales and marketing team. In this instance, corn puff snacks, one of our best-selling products.
How can that little puff come from an ear of corn? You might think it requires a lot of fancy ingredients, but it’s just science. It involves temperature, pressure, moisture levels, and, of course, corn. These factors must be properly balanced to produce a puff.
Originally, Lehi Valley only offered one flavor - our butter toffee puffs. That would soon change though. Our marketing, sales, and production teams discussed new product flavors and reviewed prototypes. Based on consumer requests, we focused on the most popular flavors. Furthermore, we acquired extruding equipment so we could manufacture the puffs in house. We've now expanded our puffs line to include:
Sea Salted Caramel Puffs
Butter Toffee Puffs
Cinnamon Roll Puffs
Golden Caramel Corn Nuggets®
White Cheddar Puffs
White Cheddar Puffs with Jalapeño
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look of how we transform bags of cornmeal into our award-winning Snackworthy Simply Puffs.
Shaping into corn puff snacks
- Cornmeal is the only ingredient. First, we mix in a little bit of water to the desired moisture level. The consistency of the cornmeal/water mixture is like a thick paste.
- Next, the wet cornmeal loads into an extruding machine that forms the shape of the collette (corn puff).
- An auger pushes the mixture through a die as it is exposed to high pressure. This develops the proper temperature to change the moisture in the cornmeal paste into steam, creating air cells in the collette, and puffs the corn.
- After the puffed mixture pushes through the die, a rotating blade trims it to the desired shape and size.
- At this point, the collettes travel through an oven for further drying. The result is the plain corn collette, which is about four percent moisture and feels crispy.
Adding flavor
- Next, we add the flavor. For our sweet puffs, we begin with a caramel or candy type solution in a kettle. The goal is to make a hard shell on the collette so the finished flavored puffs are a crunchy snack, and not soft and chewy. The cooking time determines the texture of the product.
- The cooked “caramel/candy” liquid then is applied to the plain corn collettes. The coated collettes are then removed from the kettle and separated.
- Once they cool to room temperature, the coating becomes a crunchy shell. Now they are ready for packaging!
Packing it up
- We package the flavored puffs for consumers on a form and fill machine. The packaging material (film) starts flat on a roll like aluminum foil or plastic wrap. The machine takes the film and forms and seals it, essentially becoming a tube.
- The flavored puffs are mechanically measured, for a specified amount, in hoppers that drop into the tube of packaging film. The form and fill machine heat seals the top and bottom, and cuts each bag off the tube.
- We then hand pack individual retail bags into cases, put them on pallets and ship them off to our customers before hitting your pantry shelf.
And that's it - how we make our famous corn puff snacks! We are proud to offer puffs which are gluten-free and baked not fried - meaning they're healthier for you!
Are there any other snacks that you'd like a behind-the-scenes look at? Let us know and we'd love to share!
Check out our full selection of puffs.
Also on the blog!
Check out our NEW Snackworthy puff snacks film packaging!
