News – 2024-08-21
It should be tasty and healthy, inspire curiosity and foster community: School and nursery food is more than just food. To meet the needs of all children every day, caterers need to be flexible. While some people are vegan or do not eat pork for religious reasons, others are allergic to lactose, gluten or soya. Modern and intelligent cooking systems such as RATIONAL's iVario Pro help to ensure that everyone gets high-quality, tasty and varied food despite the extra organisational effort.
Whether with or without meat, lactose-free or gluten-free, there are a few things that all dishes in school and nursery catering should have in common: As well as top marks for quality and taste, they need to be ready quickly and at the same time so that all the children can eat together. To make this work, Benoit Gourgues, Director Operational Product Management iVario at RATIONAL, recommends combining two iVario Pro models for the kitchen equipment. “In the L or XL version, the multifunctional cooking system replaces the bratt pan, boiler and pressure cooker and is designed to prepare large quantities in a short time,” he explains. With its 150 litre capacity, the iVario Pro XL can prepare 400 portions of vegetable soup in 35 minutes or 15 kilos of pasta in just 22 minutes.
The second model, the iVario Pro 2-S, is suitable for special diets: With two 25-litre capacity pans, it offers the ultimate in flexibility. "In industry catering, it is the ideal complement to an L or XL cooking system, as smaller quantities of vegetarian or allergy-friendly alternatives can also be offered." For example, while the iVario Pro L is cooking 100 portions of turkey ragout, one pan of the iVario Pro 2-S is cooking a small amount of vegetarian food and the other pan is cooking some gluten-free pasta. For even smaller portions, the pan base can be divided into up to four temperature zones so that, for example, vegetable cutlets can be browned without heating the whole pan and wasting energy.
“With the combination of these two cooking systems, caterers are ideally positioned for school and nursery catering,” says Mr Gourgues. "Thanks to its intelligent functions, the iVario Pro ensures that all meals - whether standard or special - are prepared quickly and to a high standard. And without stress for the kitchen staff." For example, with the ConnectedCooking digital kitchen management system, recipes can be created quickly and easily on a PC, tablet or smartphone and sent to the cooking systems at the click of a button. All the user has to do is start the cooking process on the cooking system and follow the on-screen instructions: The iVario Pro's cooking intelligence recognises the load quantity, condition and size of the food, continuously adjusts the cooking process and alerts you when action - such as turning or stirring - is required. "This ensures that the food always reaches the right cooking point. At the same time, there is no need for the kitchen staff to monitor the food."
Another plus point, according to Mr Gourgues: The iVario Pro is up to 4 times faster than conventional kitchen technology and uses up to 40% less energy. Combined with digital recipe management, ease of use and automatic monitoring, this means "Everything is ready on time for the break bell. Both the 100 portion turkey ragout and the 30 portion vegetarian alternative. All to a consistently high quality and without any hassle for the kitchen staff." More information about the different iVario Pro models can be found at rational-online.com.