Food safety has never been more prevalent. In recent years, consumers have increasingly prioritized sanitation and cleanliness. When dining out, they rightfully expect that the food they order is cooked properly to a safe temperature and that the kitchen foods are prepared in is clean. While traditional methods of cooking are generally considered safe, in higher volume settings such as busy restaurants, operators are looking for ways to eliminate as many risks as possible. From updating cleaning procedures to upgrading equipment, there are a number of things restaurants are doing to ensure their customers get great tasting food that’s cooked safely and properly every time. For operators interested in ramping up their efforts, updating equipment can be a big help in fostering safety.
Ensuring food safety
According to Technomic’s Q1 2024 Consumer & Operator Outlook Report, 49% of consumers say they are somewhat or very concerned about food poisoning and food safety when dining out. For operators, this means there must be an extreme attention to detail in the kitchen—for instance, proteins must be cooked according to safety guidelines to ensure foodborne illnesses are avoided. With standard ovens and stoves, adherence to these guidelines is possible, but there’s a lot of room for error. For instance, oven thermometers may be inaccurately calibrated, or one worker’s idea of “cooking on medium to low heat” for a certain amount of time may be different from another worker’s. In other words, where one employee may be hitting temperature marks every time, another may not be. Thankfully, there are alternative ways to prepare foods that eliminate these risks. Using a combi oven, for instance, ensures food is always cooked to the correct temperature.
Ensuring a safer cooking environment and boosting consistency
By updating equipment from standard ovens and stoves to combi ovens, operators and restaurant workers no longer have to worry about whether food is cooked to the proper temperature—the equipment does the work for them. RATIONAL’s cooking systems have intuitive controls that make life easier for restaurant employees. Settings and the internal probe ensure every dish is cooked to the proper temperature and comes out consistently delicious. Workers simply choose which method of cooking and what food is being cooked, and with the touch of a few buttons, restaurant meals are on their way to being prepared perfectly—every time.
RATIONAL’s iCombi Pro combi oven and iVario Pro intelligent tilt skillet help produce high volumes of cooked food without adding stress to the back of house. Additionally, they help foster a safer and more comfortable work environment—they generate less heat than traditional cooking equipment, so the kitchens don’t heat up as much. Both units also drain to the rear, preventing workers from burning themselves on hot water coming from front-facing drains associated with conventional steam-jacketed kettles. By streamlining both the cooking processes and ensuring the actual workplace is safer and less stressful, there’s far less room for error in cooking outputs—and thus, far less likelihood of food being unsafe.
To learn more about upgrading to RATIONAL’s iCombi Pro and iVario Pro cooking systems, visit rationalusa.com.
This post is sponsored by RATIONAL