Equipment: Reconsidering Combi Ovens

Equipment: Reconsidering Combi Ovens

Sep. 20, 2011 Seth Salzman

OK, you’ve planned a new restaurant or noncommercial foodservice, with a customer-tailored line-up of meal choices. As you should, you’ve got a relatively extensive menu and you are proud to say that you make a lot of your meal items in-house, from scratch. Now, let’s take a look at the tools you plan to be using to perform prep and cooking in your new location. Naturally, you’d like to install a combination of equipment to get your food prepared, and that probably would include food processors, steamers, convection ovens, grills, fryers and range tops. Before moving into your next location, however, it would be advisable to look into the “Swiss Army” knife of the restaurant business, the combi oven.

Woah! Stop hyperventilating, combi ovens are not as expensive as they once were and don’t have to be anywhere as big. There is a huge selection of combi’s on the market nowadays and they range in size from small countertop units that can hold a couple of half-sheet pans all the way up to the big puppies with room for five or six full sheet pans. You don’t necessarily need one of the big ones to get the benefit that comes from having such a flexible piece of cooking equipment.

The beauty of a combi in 0a kitchen is its ability to use steam, convection heat, conventional heat and a combination of all of the above in any way an operator requires. You can program a combi to cook at 375oF convection heat and introduce a small blast of steam every two minutes. You can rapidly pre-cook chicken, seafood, beef, ribs, fish and vegetables without quality loss and then finish these products on a grill or in a pan as needed. How easy is that?

Since market demand has grown steadily for combis and more domestic and foreign manufacturers are making them, prices have dropped and they don’t cost the same as a new car or four years of education at a state university. In my experience, current combis are pretty reasonable, especially considering how many cooking methodologies each individual unit can provide.

So, before signing off on your new location’s equipment line-up, check out a combi. It may help to keep in mind that most combi manufacturers employ really talented chefs and reps who can help you figure out how and what to cook in their ovens and even help with the programming. That way, your team will only need to know how to push a button or two to get the cooking results they desire. It may be best not to open your doors without one.

Original article from: http://nrn.com/product-watch/equipment-reconsidering-combi-ovens