Three dimensional numerical simulations of ohmic heating (OH) of highly viscous chicken chow mein sauce in typical and modified pilot scale ohmic heating chambers with sidewise parallel electrodes arrangement were undertaken. The fully coupled momentum, electrostatic and energy transfer partial differential equations were solved using commercial finite element modeling (FEM) software. The residence time (RT) of sauce in the OH treatment chambers was studied by solving the convection and diffusion equation for a tracer species injected in the system. The key parameters affecting the process, including electrical conductivity, a, thermal conductivity, k, specific heat capacitance, C-p, density, rho and viscosity, eta, were measured experimentally. For the model validation, the predicted current delivered by each generator and temperatures in selected locations were compared with those obtained from trials performed under the same conditions. A good agreement was observed between experimental and simulated data with the coefficients of determination R-2 = 0.987. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.