The technology behind the food. Catering equipment.
Used equipment in catering
Catering is not just about food, ingredients and human hands that knead them. In the restaurants, in the bars, in the ice-cream parlors and in the catering activities of any kind another factor comes into play: the machines.
Think of equipment like chips in fast food fryers, refrigerators to store fish in stock, etc.
Well, today Ristomanager will make you explore the most used equipment in the restaurant. It will take you behind the scenes of the dish you enjoy at the table. It will reveal the technology behind the food.
Used equipment in catering
1) Professional kitchens
Used equipment in catering
Even those who have never been in a restaurant’s kitchen know that it’s not like their own home.
As shown in the photos, every dish in a restaurant is prepared on the hobs of these stainless steel kitchens. Kitchens that, depending on the size of the room, can be one or more.
In addition to cooking, professional kitchens are dedicated to washing dishes and ingredients.
They, of course, not unlike our home kitchens, also have shelves to store pans, colanders and crockery of all kinds.
2) The blast chillers
Used equipment in catering
In any restaurant business, from the fish restaurant to the ice cream parlor, the blasters allow the preservation of foodstuffs.
In order to eliminate the bacteria, the bitter enemies for the health of the customer and for your business, the blast chillers use rooms with temperatures at -45 ° C, in which they cool the food in two ways:
with the abatement, bringing the temperature of the product to + 3 ° C
with freezing, which causes the temperature of the product to drop to -18 ° C
Used equipment
However, there is no danger that a blast chiller can affect the organoleptic properties of the product. The air jets of the internal chambers prevent the formation of ice crystals in the genera stored therein.
Two recommendations for those who use a blast chiller in their business:
not to store food at temperatures lower than 18 ° / 20 ° C
not to store them for more than 7 days
3) Sales counters
Used equipment in catering
The sales counters are those where the groceries are on display, ready to be chosen and purchased by the customers.
Used equipment in catering
The counters can be in wood or steel (or in both materials), but they always have the inevitable windows from which to choose the takeaway pizza or the tastes of their ice cream cone.
In the case of the sales counter of an ice cream parlor are also included the inevitable metal containers to expose tastes for sale.
There are counters of various sizes and compositions based on the size and the internal map of the room.
4) The slicers
Used equipment in catering
The slicers are a must not only in delicatessens, but also in restaurants as there is no lack of appetizers based on cold cuts, nor meat.
The most famous brand of slicers is Berkel, which has been producing and selling tirelessly since 1898. The professional slicers are divided into two categories:
Categories
to fly, that is the traditional ones that you have already seen behind the counter of a butcher, to slice the cold cuts
electric, which instead ensure more precise cuts and are also used at home
5) The kneaders
Used equipment in catering
Forget the chef kneading the pizza with bare hands: in pizzerias that have to produce in industrial quantities this role is up to the kneaders. Depending on the type of dough they are divided into three types:
plunging arms, in which a spatula and a fork that, each connected to a disk, rotate one at the same speed but opposite the other working the dough.
Also…
With this type of kneading machine you can obtain voluminous mixes (like the one for panettone), but in longer times.
The dough also allows the pizza dough to rise in a more oxygenated way thanks to the movements from bottom to top.
Used equipment in cateringfork, in which the kneading arm, in the shape of an upturned fork or “U”, is oblique with respect to the surface of the kneading pan.
Used equipment
This involves slower dough, which however allows more manipulations in the kneading area, with addition of more ingredients.
The last generation mixers also allow the extraction of the tray and to adjust the kneading at two speeds.
However, the dough remains slower than in the plunging and spiral mixers. The fork mixer is suitable for all types of dough, but highly recommended for those hard and medium-hard.
Used equipment in catering
Spiral, which unlike the two previous types (plunging and fork) ensures faster dough and with great release of heat (18 ° C).
As the name implies, the spiral mixer has inside a spiral perpendicular to the dough plane.
This spiral is suitable for mixtures of all types, but it is perfect to streamline the times of those that require long processing.
As the fork mixer has a mixture with two speeds: one for the initial mixture of the ingredients and the other for the actual mixture, the final one.