The food prep challenges that commercial kitchens face today haven’t changed all that much: They want to deliver high quality, consistent products; prepare foods ahead of time for fast service; and be equipped to store prepared foods safely and compactly.
What has changed is the cost and convenience of making these things happen. Food prices are rising in 2018, which makes efficient food preparation and storage even more crucial for commercial kitchens.
Having a well-orchestrated, easy to maintain cook-chill process can help commercial kitchens overcome these challenges.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Food Processing Center defines cook-chill as a food preparation process involving the rapid chilling of cooked food so that it can be stored safely and reheated at a later time or date as needed. Having the ability to do cook-chill results in several benefits for commercial kitchens, commissaries and restaurants large and small:
For all of these reasons, implementing a cook-chill process with cook-chill bags and the related accessories, such as chillers, storage/transport crates, heat sealers and ring stands, makes it easy for commercial kitchens and restaurants to prepare and serve consistently high quality foods fast and easily.
With Flavorseal’s system, the process centers around cook-chill bags made for easy filling with hot foods like soups, stews, sauces, chili and pureed foods like mashed potatoes.
After cooking, foods are simply poured or ladled into the cook-chill bags. Using a ring stand to hold the bags makes the filling and bag handling process easier. Excess air is removed and the filled bags are sealed with a heat sealer.
The cook-chill process results in portioned, easy-to-handle bagsof food that are easy to store or transport. The portioned bags also may keep foods fresh longer, and they make it easy to distribute a consistent product to multiple locations and serve a consistent product from one day to the next. For added convenience, using Flavorseal’s printed cook-chill bags eliminates the need for stick-on labels, allowing for foodservice workers to write directly onto the bags, identifying what’s inside, pack date, and when it needs to be discarded.
For more information about Flavorseal’s cook-chill solutions, please contact us.