By Soumava Goswami
In a busy commercial kitchen, there’s little time to stand around and idle. Everyone runs from pillar to post, preparing ingredients, serving dishes, and preparing the next meal.
Producing top-notch dishes always requires preparing dressings, marinades, gravies, and sauces as freshly as possible. The Cook and Chill Food Process can help with this.
Luckily, the food preparation has become significantly easier with various cook and chill kitchen appliances, such as combi ovens, cook chill mixer kettles, and blast chillers. We explore the basics of this method and the reasons why it is a must in your kitchen.
Understanding The Cook and Chill Process
The cook-and-chill system is a popular food prep technique for cooking food in bulk. At first, you cook the base of the food. For example, you can prepare the sauce for pasta or the gravy for a main course. The next step is chilling it in quick succession.
When you are serving orders, take small portions out and reheat them. So, how is it different from frozen foods?
That’s easy. Here, the food is cooked fully. However, it is not fully frozen. It is chilled with the Cook and Chill Food Process, retaining the taste and texture of the freshly cooked food.
This is an effective preparation method for pasta, gravy items, sauces, soups, stews, casseroles, and confectioneries, among other things.
The types of equipment used vary, but the most common include the following:
- Mixer kettles for mixing ingredients.
- Pressure cookers and combination ovens are used during cooking.
- Blast chillers keep the food cold, without freezing and spoiling the taste.
That means there’s no freezer burn or mushy food when it’s taken out from the blast chiller.. Effective storage ensures you can prepare food in bulk and store it without the fear of spoilage.
Ideal For Kitchens In a Rush
No matter what type of kitchen you’re running, using these appliances for the cook-and-chill method will benefit it. Here are the top reasons for this.
1. Offers Better Productivity
Commercial kitchen workers experience different levels of stress. The rush during prime time is worth watching out for. Everyone’s on their toes to receive and serve the next order precisely.
Since the market is rife with deadly competition, you must offer the most dynamic menu, keeping your food and service quality intact.
The threshold requirement is to buy good equipment to ensure better productivity. The next step is training your staff in upgraded service techniques. The goal is to provide the best sync between your products and services.
Regarding the same, your staff needs to show impeccable precision in cooking and customer management. Otherwise, the operations would be heavily cluttered, and the staff would be stressed out handling the rush hours.
The third step is to make your operations more flexible. For example, workers should operate in rotational shifts. Moreover, adequate staff should be in the kitchen and service area to avoid overstressing the small number of employees!
The final goal is creating a flexible, seamless work environment. While you can’t eliminate the prime-time rush and the stress that results from it, you can streamline the operations to reduce workers’ stress levels at an individual level!
2. Less Food Wastage
Without the right equipment, maintaining a decent food grade is almost impossible. When food is not up to par, a lot of cooked food goes to waste.
That’s why you need a stock of fresh produce and other perishable goods. Hence, your cooked food will be fresh and delectable—a combination ideal for customers’ taste buds and health!
We are fortunate that we have the rapid cooking method. This method entails optimally using fresh produce and other goods and ensuring that you use the products when needed.
The next method is the Cook and Chill Food Process methodology. When you use this approach while cooking, it ensures the food’s safety. In connection, you can prevent the spread of pathogens and several bacteria.
In connection, you can also avoid any risk of foodborne illnesses. Your kitchen will also maintain a good reputation for providing fresh food.
3. Improves Overall Efficiency
There’s a stock recipe for every dish. Replicating that with each order might be a challenge. The challenges become apparent when the kitchen doesn’t have the right equipment.
For example, some cloud kitchens use the same steamers for baos and dimsums. The flavor of one is infused into the steam of another, resulting in a blunt and marred taste. That’s where the Cook and Chill Food Process comes into play.
It lets you prepare your menus in advance to avoid clutter afterwards. Moreover, you can prepare and store a portion of food during your leisure hours. When you receive an order, you can simply assort the staples and the base and cook them in one pot.
Certainly, the process is different for each dish. However, the methodology is the same.
You can save time once you start following the method in your restaurant. At the same time, your staff can reduce the workload. Hence, you can deliver more orders comprehensively in less time.
However, that inadvertently means you have to use your staff optimally. Ineffective staff can’t adopt this methodology professionally!
4. Extends Shelf Life of Prepared Dishes and Ingredients
Even with the freshest ingredients, food will spoil quickly if not stored correctly. Fluctuating temperatures in a running kitchen might spoil the food easily if left on a counter. Frozen food has ice crystals on the surface, inhibiting the flavors and making the food taste bland.
So, it is better not to defrost your food. Basic cooling is enough. It will expose the bacteria on the food, but not freeze them along with it!
Hence, blast chillers are critical in the Cook and Chill Food Process. This swift process improves the shelf life of almost all preparations. However, all kinds of food don’t stay fresh long in the chill-blaster. But the ones that remain fresh don’t need preheating before serving!
This, in turn, makes it considerably easier to plan meals and prepare food. Foods such as mashed potatoes, salads, desserts, soups, and sauces can be made in advance and stored in the blast chiller until needed. Rapid cooling technology ensures that food isn’t soggy and tastes as fresh as it was made.
Final Thoughts
Using your mixer kettle to help you create the Cook and Chill Food Process is an effective way to increase the shelf life of your foods and reduce the time spent on food preparation.
Meanwhile, you can free your staff from doing other kitchen duties. Creating the highest-quality dishes will ensure that your kitchen always has a steady flow of customers.
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