Why Is Blast Chilling Important?

In the food business, keeping dishes and ingredients cold is crucial to preventing customers' health from deteriorating. Hazardous bacteria can grow even in chilly situations, and if food is warm, these potentially-harmful critters can multiply by the millions in a matter of hours.

There are many different ways to refrigerate edible objects, but one of the safest and most-effective methods is called "blast chilling." Read on to discover why this particular strategy can be helpful in any restaurant.

How blast chilling works
Essentially, blast chilling quickly reduces the temperature of cooked food immediately. This process works for any item from pea soup to a well-done steak. The reasoning is that the less time a prepared dish is within the temperature range of bacterial growth, the more safe it will be to store in the long-term. Prolonged storage is possible because there will be nearly no chance of an infection.

Temperature range
According to Caterer and Hotelkeeper, the United States Department of Health requires blast-chillers to cool food from 70 degrees Celsius to 3 degrees Celsius or below within 90 minutes. This can be a monumental task, because in a normal refrigerator, such a vast cooling would take upwards of a few hours. While heat might be quickly lost in the first few minutes, chilling generally plateaus after a half hour or so. Blast chillers, however, literally bombard any cuisine with waves of freezing air to ensure that the food is quickly and evenly cooled.

Who benefits from blast chilling the most?
Catering companies and restaurants who use pre-cooked cuisine would benefit greatly from proper restaurant equipment like the Worktop Blast Chiller. This device ensures that food can be stored for weeks or even months and delivered relatively fresh when it comes time for reheating.