![\"\"](\"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/FrozSeafood_RGB-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDuring the pandemic, they noticed the importance of convenience. \u201cWe started toying with the idea of a frozen fish meal that was ready to go into the oven,\u201d Speckman says. They hired a chef, developed recipes\u2009\u2014\u2009such as garlic herb butter flounder\u2009\u2014\u2009and hope to have the product in Raleigh area grocery stores this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dinners are frozen using nitrogen blast freezers in a plant near the coast\u2009\u2014\u2009important because the freezing occurs so fast that it doesn\u2019t taste like frozen fish, Speckman says. Every step of the process had to be documented for the food safety plan, so the students took field trips to the coast and spent time in the company\u2019s new processing plant in Raleigh. \u201cIt was exciting for them to work on a new product,\u201d Stevenson says.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n
When the two alums who founded Locals Seafood decided to create heat-and-eat meals featuring seafood caught in North Carolina, they got a little help from some graduate students in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The students in Clint Stevenson\u2019s food safety class helped the company, founded by Ryan Speckman \u201902 and Lin Peterson \u201903, put together an FDA-required safety plan known as HACCP (Hazard and Critical Control Points). In the past, the class had helped other enterprises solve food safety issues, but this was first time his students had worked with seafood, which can be challenging. \u201cIt\u2019s not like making cupcakes,\u201d says Stevenson, an associate professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speckman and Lin founded the company in 2010. Most of the seafood caught off the N.C. coast is shipped to northern hubs like Philadelphia, Pa. and New York, N.Y., so the duo decided to start bringing more to the Triangle and, along the way, introduced restaurant chefs to local species like black drum and sheepshead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the pandemic, they noticed the importance of convenience. \u201cWe started toying with the idea of a frozen fish meal that was ready to go into the oven,\u201d Speckman says. They hired a chef, developed recipes\u2009\u2014\u2009such as garlic herb butter flounder\u2009\u2014\u2009and hope to have the product in Raleigh area grocery stores this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dinners are frozen using nitrogen blast freezers in a plant near the coast\u2009\u2014\u2009important because the freezing occurs so fast that it doesn\u2019t taste like frozen fish, Speckman says. Every step of the process had to be documented for the food safety plan, so the students took field trips to the coast and spent time in the company\u2019s new processing plant in Raleigh. \u201cIt was exciting for them to work on a new product,\u201d Stevenson says.<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Frozen seafood dinners get a boost from Food Science students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":4221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-immersive.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-immersive-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"backgroundColor\":\"blue_400\",\"caption\":\"Locals Seafood founders Ryan Speckman \u201902 and Lin Peterson \u201903.<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Photograph courtsey of Locals Seafood\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Frozen seafood dinners get a boost from Food Science students.\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[262,269,343,512,704,718,1025,1057],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-4219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-clint-stevenson","tag-college-of-agriculture-and-life-sciences","tag-department-of-food-bioprocessing-and-nutrition-sciences","tag-heat-and-eat-meals","tag-lin-peterson","tag-locals-seafood","tag-ryan-speckman","tag-seafood"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":52,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=4219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}