Blast Chiller – What’s All The Fuss?
Blast chillers are designed to provide that critical control necessary to maintain food quality and sanitation during the preparation of a wide range of foods in today’s busy food-service kitchens.
Casseroles and extended or layered entree preparations are dense and extremely difficult to cool. Most of these items are assembled ahead of time and heated as needed for service.
Especially dangerous is the fact that common ingredients in these preparations include eggs, cream, cheese and ground meat. Holding in a storage refrigerator does not properly cool these preparations. Items include ziti; lasagna; eggplant; macaroni and cheese; rice, bean and other pasta-base dishes; stuffing’s; stews; a-la-king preparations and other ethnic style entrees.
Generally, roasted or baked meats and poultry are prepared several hours ahead of service due to their lengthy cooking time and to the fact that these items must be cooled prior to slicing. Often these foods are left out in the kitchen to cool.
Blast chilling not only provides a rapid cool-down, reducing preparation time, but also maintains product sanitation. Items include turkey breasts; roasting chickens; Cornish hens; various beef, veal, pork and lamb roasts; briskets; ribs; meat loaves; meatballs; taco fillings and sausage dishes.
A third group of potentially hazardous food preparations that would benefit from the use of a blast chiller eould be salad and sandwich fillings. Contamination levels are often high since the ingredients in these preparations include eggs, mayonnaise, and cream base dressings, protein and raw vegetable ingredients.
Salad mixtures and sandwich fillings are ideal candidates for a blast chiller; they include potato, macaroni, rice, pasta, fruit and cabbage salads; and tuna, salmon, crab, seafood, chicken, turkey, ham, and egg salads and fillings.
Even liquid or semi-viscous items such as gravies, broth’s, soups, chilies, & sauces maintain higher levels of quality and sanitation when using a blast chiller in lieu of standard storage refrigerator cooling.
Blast Chillers are becoming an important acquisition in all kitchens, with Environmental Health Practitioners endorsing them as a major benefit in food safety.
Why Use A Blast Chiller?
The main use of the blast chiller is to blast freeze hot foods from over 90 degrees to a very low, very safe temperature of 3 or -18 degrees Centigrade.
The reason for this is to eliminate the risk of food cooling over a period of time where food can be at risk say between 60 to 10 Degrees Centigrade.The powerful range of blast chillers are designed to exceed the very latest Food Safety / HACCP legislation.
What’s The Advantages Of A Blast Chiller?
In a nutshell…..
- preserves Quality
- Appearance
- texture
- taste
- and nutritional value
If you would like to know more about , how a blast chiller could impact your business, why not get in touch with our resident expert or check out our freezer earlybird list….
