A method and apparatus for rapidly chilling liquid or slurried food products
through
a two-stage sequence of jacket cooling followed by vacuum chilling. Slurry and
liquid food products heated in a batch are chilled by first employing a chilled
liquid flowing through a double walled jacket (22) surrounding the vessel
chamber (17). When the food product reaches a temperature at which jacket
cooling becomes inefficient, this is followed by pulling a vacuum in the space
above the product to vacuum cool the product to the desired chilled temperature.
