Aldborough School. Norfolk, UK.
“Last thing Friday we pop the cleaning tablets into the RATIONAL and on Monday morning it’s clean and ready to go. It couldn’t be better!” -
Tracy Hindry, School Cook
“Last thing Friday we pop the cleaning tablets into the RATIONAL and on Monday morning it’s clean and ready to go. It couldn’t be better!” -
Tracy Hindry, School Cook
Aldborough Primary School is a typical village school. Catering for their own pupils as well as two other nearby schools, they produce between 100-150 cooked lunches per day. Work in the kitchen starts at 8:15am with a need for the first 40-60 meals for the satellite schools to be ready for 11:40am.
Following the introduction of free school meals for Reception to Year 2 in September 2014, the school has seen an increase of an extra 50 meals per day.
“What would have been a challenge with our old ovens is not a problem for our new RATIONAL”, says Tracy Hindry, School Cook.
Once a week the school runs an after school baking club for 14 pupils. “The RATIONAL has helped here too”, says Tracy. “Now the children can mix-up the cakes, pastries and biscuits ready for me to load and everything is cooked in time for the children to take home”.
School meals are never far from the headlines and with the recent introduction of free school meals many have had to question their catering arrangements.
“With the RATIONAL SelfCookingCenter®, broccoli can now be cooked in under 4 minutes. This means we can start cooking as the children file into the dining room, so they are getting the freshest most deliciously cooked vegetables possible”, says Tracy Hindry. The school cooks will be using the overnight roasting process to free up the oven in the mornings.
As a satellite kitchen, the vegetables are cooked just before loading into the insulated transport containers. “This means they are much fresher the other end. The pupils and staff have even commented on the improvement”, says Tracy.
Since having the RATIONAL, Aldborough School has been able to add new items to the menu, like Toad-in-the-Hole. “We are even using it to make custard. We simply steam the milk, add the powder and pop into the RATIONAL. There are no lumps at all, its perfect!”, says Tracy.