Imagine you’re feeding hundreds, maybe thousands, of hungry people at a time, and each one of them is expecting your daily menu—your rotating soup of the day, pasta dish or maybe a signature sauce—to be served up hot, flavorful and delicious. Could you bet on the consistency and integrity of your ingredients to be maintained day in and day out, especially with a small or inexperienced staff on hand?
That’s the dilemma facing foodservice operators across multiple channels, from hospitals to university dining halls. In these segments, operators are mitigating the challenges associated with consistency and the labor squeeze by using the cook-chill system of preparation. It’s a safe way to cook a lot of food relatively quickly. Makes sense for institutional dining, but does cook-chill have a home in the c-store sphere?
Cook-chill is exactly what it sounds like: Food is cooked and chilled for later. Employees prepare the item, then bag and seal it, quick-chill it and freeze it for a predetermined number of days. The process helps operators maximize their menu items’ shelf life without risking taste and texture issues.
This controlled method can be applied to big batches of food at once, providing efficiency of preparation and cutting down on the number of people required to execute cooking, reheating and serving. Cook-chill can be broken down into the following steps:
- First, food is cooked to a proper temperature according to food-safety guidelines.
- The food is then placed into water-tight and sealed reduced-oxygen packaging (ROP) bags.
- Next, the ROP bags are heat-sealed or closed tightly with a clip.
- After sealing, the bags are blast-chilled or placed in a water bath, quickly bringing their temperature down from 135 degrees or more to below 41 degrees Fahrenheit. This step must be finished in 90 minutes or less.
- Finally, the bagged food is refrigerated and frozen until it’s time to reheat.
The chilling portion is a crucial step unique to the process, according to Williams Refrigeration, a Hong Kong-based global manufacturer of blast chillers and other back-of-house cook-chill equipment. Warm food will not cool fast enough in a traditional cooler, and in the slow-moving interim between hot and cold temperatures, bacteria could grow quickly, putting your customers at risk.
By blast-chilling after cooking, the temperature of the food drops quickly, ensuring that safety measures are intact. Blast chillers, special coolers that bring temperatures down more quickly than traditional coolers, also allow for some flexibility in the types of foods that operators can prep with this method. Staff can set the chiller to either soft chill or hard chill; soft-chill settings apply gentler temperatures to lighter foods such as fruits and vegetables, while hard-chill temperatures are more suitable for denser foods such as thicker pasta sauces, meats, casseroles and lasagna.
But would it work for c-stores? While the application is perhaps most appropriate in convenience stores with commissaries—where bulk prep is the norm—the benefits of cook-chill are worth keeping on your radar while looking at new menu extensions or catering opportunities.
According to Plascon USA, a Traverse City, Mich.-based manufacturer of cook-chill equipment, the resulting extended 30-day refrigerated shelf life, with potentially no compromise of the food’s appearance, consistency, freshness or flavor, could help c-store foodservice operators minimize food waste or spoilage.
And there’s more good news for labor-squeezed operators: Cook-chill can help you do more with less, according to Lincoln, R.I.-based Chef Services Group, consultants and product developers for food manufacturers.
According to their estimates, foodservice operators are saving 35% or more on labor costs through cook-chill.
A single staff member can prepare a large batch of food and then prep for servings throughout the week, with other team members doing reheats as needed. This can help yield consistency from serving to serving, along with more streamlined training.
The cost of equipment and space required to implement a cook-chill process will likely be the biggest hurdle for operators. The ROP bags, water baths, pumps and all-in-one tubs required to carry out the cook-chill method all represent a major investment.
But the potential payoff could be big. Successful execution of cook-chill could net some sizable rewards for operators looking to up their foodservice game, save time and money, and improve efficiencies in the back of the house.
To get the ball rolling, consider reaching out to a qualified food-safety professional to first understand the requirements and Department of Health regulations associated with cook-chill preparations.
And because having the necessary space—stations for cooking, bag filling and sealing—is critical, layout and design of the kitchen footprint must be optimized to effectively pull off the cook-chill system, according to Williams Refrigeration. Plan for approximately 2,000 square feet of space to house the stations and equipment to implement cook-chill.
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