Imagine: an Italian restaurant known for their tiramisu runs out of the dessert on a Saturday night, their busiest night of the week. Unfortunately, the restaurant’s pastry chef works Sunday to Wednesday. Without the signature dessert, guests leave unhappy and potential revenue is lost. But it could have been prevented without sacrificing work hours or freshness.
In relation to food, the literal definition of “freshness” is “the state of being recently made.” So in our hypothetical above, how could this restaurant maintain fresh tiramisu without their pastry chef in the kitchen that night? How can we maintain a state of freshness, without producing the product the very same day?
For the answer, we turn to the experts.
Freshness does not necessarily relate to the cooking or production of that day. For many chefs and operators, like Alexandre Treffle, General Manager of French Bakery in Dubai, freshness is related to the way an operation produces a product in advance, stores the product, and finishes the product.
Hear more from Alexandre and his processes in the short video below:
Besides Alexandre, here’s what freshness means to other chefs who utilize Irinox equipment in their kitchens:
Davide Comaschi, Pasticceria Martesana: "Giving customers a fragrant product that’s always fresh and dazzling…having a full selection of top quality products in the shop. And above all, providing customers with an exciting experience."
Andrea Incerti Vezzani, Ristorante Locanda Ca’ Matilde: "The freshness of produce is ensured by the method used for blast chilling it. The most difficult thing for both cooking and preserving is to safeguard freshness so that the food maintains maximum quality and is easily digested."
Olivier Bajard, Perpignan: "We achieve freshness by making “bases” in advance and shock freezing them. All of the cakes we make and present every morning are finished off “live”…maintaining a cold temperature…so that we always have a product of the highest quality in terms of freshness."
Freshness Reimagined with Irinox Blast Chilling and Shock Freezing
Chefs around the world agree – Irinox blast chillers change the way restaurants, bakeries, and other foodservice operations serve fresh food. Here are a few reasons how:
Product Quality
While other blast chillers require operators to wait before moving food from the oven to a blast chiller, Irinox allows it to be done immediately with no moisture loss. By letting food cool down to 150 degrees after cooking, a great amount of moisture loss occurs, as well as a significant amount of flavor and yield. When shock freezing, operators keep their product’s initial quality intact. Faster freezing eliminates large ice crystals, preserving the moisture and freshness for weeks or months.
Organized Production
With the MultiFresh from Irinox, chefs, bakers, and foodservice operators can better prepare and organize their food production process days, or even weeks, in advance. When products can be finished in minutes and on demand, baked and pre-baked goods that are shock frozen can prepared once a week rather than every day.
SEE ALSO: 3 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With an Irinox MultiFresh
Reduced Food Cost
Produce and ingredients are much cheaper to purchase when they are in season. But the prices go up, stock is limited, and freshness is sacrificed out of season. That’s not the case when you shock freeze produce. In the off-season months, operators can still offer popular fruits and vegetables in their dishes, because their quality has been preserved over many months.
Labor Management
Let’s return to our Italian restaurant from earlier. With an Irinox MultiFresh, our pastry chef is able to work her normal hours, produce all of her creations in advance, and keep the restaurant’s signature dessert on the menu. Blast chilling and shock freezing helps chefs and kitchen staff avoid night work preparing products, thus reducing overtime and additional labor costs, while managing market demand and peak periods, well in advance.
When chefs can produce fresh products, even when they’re not at work, that’s freshness reimagined.
Come see how your foodservice operation could benefit from an Irinox MultiFresh unit, attend an Irinox Freshness Reimagined event in our test kitchen. Click below to sign up.
