In the restaurant business, preserving food for a longer duration is as important as choosing the menu for the customers. Preserving food for longer hours helps the restaurant save money in the following ways:
A. Waste reduction
B. Cost cutting by bulk preparation.
C. Preserve the flavor for longer hours.
D. Above all, it saves the restaurant from enforcement.
The food safety authority of Ireland highly recommends the use of blast chillers and shock freezers to preserve food. Use shock freezers/Blast chillers before the “critical control point” so as to the preservation point to avoid contamination. A critical control point is the temperature just after the cooking where the microbes start cultivating in the food, though it is mostly between +3°C to + 40 °C.
Different food has different preservative methods, in order to prevent the loss of their original flavor and texture for example vegetables, rice and a small portion of food can underwent a “soft chilling” process (0°C to +2°C ) whereas meat and fatty products underwent “hard chilling” with blast chiller temp at -10°C. Food required to preserve for weeks or months can be “shock freeze” to -18°C. The temperature and the date of the preservation need to be recorded in the chart prescribed by the FSAI.
Images below show different preservation process and their effects. courtesy: Everlasting refrigeration brochure.
