Better banquets, lower costs: the latest SelfCooking Center from Rational

200 ‘perfect plates’ in eight minutes, with Rational’s Finishing technology

Using a Rational SelfCooking Center for banqueting doesn’t just mean better quality food, it also means huge cost savings. That includes anything up to 30% more portions out of every joint of meat; needing fewer chefs for events; and slashing maintenance and servicing costs by hundreds of pounds every year.

Rational SelfCooking Centers are available to public sector buyers with preferential discount from Buying Solutions under framework number A1626669A.

With meat and fish, the Rational produces succulent results at the touch of a button. But it also cuts shrinkage, because the food is cooked in its ideal environment – so that every joint produces more. “We gain 25% to 30% more portions out of a prime rib of beef or a turkey, and that’s direct profit,” says Martin Heuser of the award-winning Westin Hotel in Calgary, Canada.

The SelfCooking Center will deliver perfect results in both cook-serve and cook-chill systems. Many banquet operations now use cook-chill because it allows the food to be prepared a day or two in advance, spreading the kitchen workload and thus reducing stress and labour costs. Commenting on the switch to Rational combis and a cook-chill system, Bixente Perry of the Intercontinental Buckhead, Georgia, USA says: “Today we can easily serve 1,600 covers for a banquet with only five chefs, we needed twenty chefs in the past.”

The Rational ‘Finishing’ process makes cook-chill banqueting simple by regenerating food to perfection, with no drying out or condensation, at the touch of a button. Chefs arrange the food in advance on plates and store it chilled. Just before it is required, it is loaded into the SelfCooking Center and the Finishing function brings it up to serving temperature – anything from twenty plates to nearly 200 can be ‘Finished’ at once, depending on the model of SelfCooking Center, in as little as eight minutes. Special trolleys that store the plated meals can be wheeled directly from the refrigerator into the Rational, minimising handling.

The last thing any chef wants to do after a busy banquet is clean the oven. That’s where Rational’s new CareControl comes in: simply load the cleaning tabs into the appropriate points on the SelfCooking Center, push the cleaning button and the unit cleans itself. Because it also descales itself, it doesn’t even need a water filter. "It’s unbelievable," says Alan Bird, former head chef at the Ivy in London, UK. "CareControl saves around £700 in running costs every year for each combi, because there’s no need to service the water filters. It significantly reduces running costs for chemicals, water and energy, too."

Rational is organising a series of free SelfCooking Center ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminars on banqueting. For information contact your dealer, freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944 or call +44 800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com