Featuring Maggie Beer with:
Leo Gstrein – National Executive Chef, Compass Group Australia
Module Description:
The Cook Chill process is a controlled system of advanced food preparation designed to provide more flexibility and efficiency in food service. A huge variety of foods, including meats, vegetables, soups and even desserts can be cooked from fresh, then rapidly – or blast – chilled. Key to the success of Cook Chill is close monitoring through the storage, transportation and delivery process until service, resulting in uniformity of flavours and textures.
However, production efficiency shouldn’t be at the expense of satisfying levels of flavour, texture and aroma. Maximise the process and make the most of all opportunities, including regeneration, enhancing and food presentation, by adding extra garnishes, boosting flavour, colour, texture and ensuring that the aromas of home cooking permeate throughout the dining room. This will result in increased food consumption and a more satisfactory dining experience.
Staff involvement is also essential to the success when preparing Cook Chill meals for service. Being equipped with the knowledge to enhance meals empowers staff to be creative in the kitchen and proud of their finishing and presentation skills.
In this module:
- We discuss the Cook Chill approach to food preparation
- We talk about the importance of the Regeneration process
- And we demonstrate simple and effective ways to enhance Cook Chill meals for maximum aroma and flavour
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this course, you should be able to:
- Define the cook-chill process
- Describe the types of meals and ingredients that best suit the process.
- Explain why cook-chill meals should not be simply a heat-and-eat solution.
- Demonstrate how to present cook-chill and fresh vegetable dishes with maximum colour, aroma and flavour for residents.