Consumption on the Rise

if they so choose, thereby creating new recipes that are stored for
future use.
Using such innovative cooking techniques, scratch recipes,
and the finest ingredients, B Roberts Foods (Charlotte, North
Carolina) which produces sauces, salads, side dishes, and entrees
for grocery stores, as well as customized recipes for the restaurant
industry.
The majority of B Roberts Foods recipes are truly chef inspired
and prepared. One of its best sellers is a fresh grilled chicken
breast cut into strips and served over shell pasta that has been
tossed in a sun-dried tomato pesto and sprinkled with parsley.
The firm, which recently expanded into a new and larger
plant, recently acquired a Unitherm flame grill and spiral oven
to enhance its production capabilities.
The griller features multiple ribbon burners, some of which
can be turned off or on to achieve the wanted production scale.
Using this equipment, chefs are able to achieve the look of
flamed highlights and other home- or chef-style characteristics
in the ready-serve meals. They also can develop uniform colour
on the top as on the bottom of various foods, such as chicken
and steaks.
What chefs like about the spiral oven is that they are able to
achieve exactly what they want in their rotisserie and their baking
and basting. With the spiral oven, a built-in basting effect can
be incorporated; as foods such as chicken spiral upward in the
oven, the juice from each piece of meat falls on the next one,
enhancing both colour and texture.
Spiral ovens enable steaming, roasting, broiling and baking,
post pasteurization, and can be coupled with a
chiller and loading systems to suit users’ needs
with a limited footprint.
The capacity of these ovens is surprisingly great
in terms of both product throughput and heat.
Although some equipment manufacturers build
+
“Our chef is using the
equipment to process
products that meet the
same expectations as you
would have if you were
cooking at home on a
barbeque.”
– Walter Sommers, Ruprecht
Company
meal chefs. The flame temperature of the flame grill is much
higher than that of restaurant-type grilling equipment. It can be
set as high as 1,500 degrees (F), and can be throttled back to get
the desired finishing effect.
In addition to throughput cooking capacity, this equipment
has much more thermal capacity than restaurant equipment . It’s
able to cook food items like steaks very quickly. Compact ovens
can be set for temperatures of 500 degrees (F) and maintain that
set point within one degree.
In the ready-to-serve business, the ability to change production
frequently is important. These advanced ovens have thyristors
to control the output of the heat source on a percentage of the
actual demand. This allows the oven to hold its set-points within
one degree with optimal efficiency. The quality of the product is
also more consistent and does not experience the abuse from a
heat source that is constantly banging on and off to try and hold
temperature.
The flexibility of these advanced cooking machines also gives
processors the flexibility to create more products without adding
to capital equipment – another important benefit of having a lot
of powerful capabilities in a smaller cooking package.
“We produce millions of pounds of fully cooked food
annually,” says Ruprecht’s Sommers. “With the new continuous
production equipment we’ve recently installed, we are nowhere
near exceeding their capacities.”
Ed Sulivan is a Hermosa Beach, California-based writer. He has
researched and written about high technologies, healthcare, finance and
real estate for over 25 years.
machines that can cook up to 10,000 lbs. per hour,
it is the availability of the smaller equipment that
makes it such a good solution for ready-to-serve
processors. The micro machine, for example
cooks up to 500 lbs. per hour.
The ability of equipment such as the Unitherm
flame grill to reach very high temperatures is
another feature that appeals to ready-to-serve
meatbusiness.ca
July/August 2011 Canadian Meat Business 29