Rational says its SelfCooking Center is the ideal cooking unit for food retailers in supermarkets, bakeries, delis and butchers shops. It’s designed to be more than just an ‘oven’; it replaces many types of cooking equipment - baking, roasting, poaching, toasting and even preparing fried foods like pre-fried chips. It also cooks perfectly at the press of a button - simply put the food in, select the type of food from the control panel, and press the button.   That’s it: the SelfCooking Center selects the best way to cook the food, leaving staff free to look after customers.

A drawback with all front-of-house cooking is the issue of cooking fumes, which usually means installing a dedicated and expensive ventilation system. Rational has overcome this with its own accessory, called UltraVent. This is a compact and dedicated hood that sits on top of the SelfCooking Center, extracting and treating fumes and condensing the steam, removing heat and returning the water to the drain. Where the SelfCooking Center is the main or only cooking unit UltraVent can remove the need for a dedicated extraction system altogether. It saves space and installation costs, makes the working environment more pleasant and reduces or eliminates unwanted smells from the cooking process.

The versatility of the SelfCooking Center means that not only can a single unit save a lot of space, it also can save a lot of time. Because of its precisely controlled mix of heat, humidity and airflow - varying between types of food - it cooks faster than more conventional systems.

For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com

Hotel Kilkenny, located near the vibrant heart of the city of Kilkenny, is one of the most luxurious and stylish four-star hotels in Ireland. 

Innovation and determination, combined with the philosophy of ‘never compromising on quality’, are creating the formula for success at Hotel Kilkenny and this shows itself in the quality of the food. The hotel recently completely refurbished its banqueting facilities, which are now capable of hosting events for up to 800 guests. Operations manager Michael Griffin and head chef Stephan Koch talk about how they run the banquets and event catering.

BEAUTIFULLY SUCCULENT RESULTS WITH THE SELFCOOKING CENTER

Head chef Stephan Koch was recommended Rational by a colleague and was an immediate convert. Now he cooks almost everything, from starter to desserts, in the SelfCooking Center: grilling, roasting, braising and steaming.

"If the ingredients are good, the results will be good," he says. "When you cook with the SelfCooking Center you don’t have to supervise the cooking process and there is more time for other jobs, such as selecting and purchasing ingredients.

"We also have more time for bar snacks, which customers expect almost immediately after ordering."

The Rational SelfCooking Center is the next generation of combi-oven and can cook fully automatically, with perfect results. The user just selects the type of food and the level of browning required (e.g. rare or medium) - and that’s it!
"As it’s so easy to work with, we use it for everything: starters, main courses and desserts, grilling, roasting, braising and steaming - from cooking fish to baking ciabattas, scones or pies, or Christmas pudding", Stephen says. "It makes excellent roast beef, too - the meat is very juicy and succulent."

SERVE 240 PLATES IN ONLY 8 MINUTES

There’s more than just better food quality with the SelfCooking Center, he adds. It also saves him time. Even a banquet with more than 200 guests takes only eight minutes to regenerate. "As the pre-heating and cooking time is very short, we can be very flexible, even if the main course is required earlier or later than expected," says Stephan.
Operations Manager Michael Griffin adds: "We get lots of really positive comments from the guests. The food is good and the service is good."

COST SAVING IN PERSONNEL AND INGREDIENTS

How is it that the banqueting quality at the Hotel Killkenny is so high, even though food is served in such large quantities?
"We normally prepare one day before, when there is plenty of time", Stephan explains. "The meals are plated up, put in a special “plate racks” trolley and kept cool until the event. As the finishing (regeneration) only takes eight minutes, we can adjust our timing to whatever is going on at the event, for example if speakers are running late. Even though there might be up to 800 guests to serve, the kitchen doesn’t get stressed."

And there are big savings with the Rational SelfCooking Center too, he’s found out: "We’ve saved 30% in staff costs and at least 15% on food shrinkage. Before we got the Rational SelfCooking Center, we needed eight chefs for a 200 person banquet. Now we only need three."
For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com

Rational now offers a group of features that make the SelfCooking Center ideal for baking pizzas – ideal not only for taste, but also for speed. In fact, the units can bake from one to 100 pizzas in just eight minutes.

This speed of delivery, combined with the SelfCooking Center’s ease of use, makes it the ideal solution for bakers and retailers selling freshly cooked pizza. The SelfCooking Center range offers a wide choice of sizes, to suit all types of operation.   

The ‘Pizza’ control setting means the SelfCooking Center will create the perfect cooking climate for pizza, at the touch of a button. And the unit’s LevelControl technology means it will automatically adapt the programme for fresh or frozen pizza.

So all staff have to do is load up the Rational, push the button and get on with other work.

The specially designed non-stick Rational Pizza Dishes hold pizzas up to 280mm (eleven inches) in diameter and are specifically designed to produce the perfect pizza. There’s also the new Grill and Pizza Tray. Pizzas can be popped onto the flat side of the tray, which like the Pizza Dish is non-stick and designed specifically for pizza cooking, and then put into the SelfCooking Unit. The reverse of the tray is ridged for grilled products.

Using the Rational Pizza Control in conjunction with the Pizza Dish or Grill and Pizza Tray guarantees perfect results: crispy bases with deliciously moist toppings.

The SelfCooking Center is hugely versatile. It can cook almost anything, without supervision, such as roast chicken, steak pie, bread and cakes - roasting, poaching, toasting, baking and baking off.   It’s all automatic, at the touch of a button.

For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com

If you want to see chefs producing A La Carte meals in a real restaurant situation, where timing is crucial, check out the Rational Real Restaurant at Hotelympia 2008. But don’t expect to see them under pressure. They’ll be using the SelfCooking Center’s ‘Finishing‘ technology to deliver perfectly cooked food, quickly, with no hassle.

With ‘Finishing’ dishes can be prepared in advance, so it’s perfect for á la carte cookery. For example, up to 150 meals can be prepared by two chefs beforehand, then plated as the orders come in. Crucially for a la carte cooking, different foods can be prepared in one SelfCooking Center simultaneously, with no risk of cross contamination, and the ‘Finishing’ can be controlled rack by rack.

The chef simply puts the plated meals in the SelfCooking Center, selects ‘Finishing’ on the control panel, tells the unit what food is being prepared and chooses a rack. The SelfCooking Center automatically calculates each rack’s ‘Finishing’ time accurately, and tells the chef when it is ready. What’s more, when the door is opened and the rack taken out, the ‘Finishing’ technology makes allowance for the interruption to adjust cooking times for the other racks.

Temperature, cooking climate, time and air speed are continuously adjusted throughout the cabinet to ensure all dishes are perfectly prepared. The separate ‘climate control’ and airflow pattern over the food ensures there is no cross-contamination between different foods (for example, meat or vegetarian dishes) and avoids pools of condensation or dried-up food. Thus, for example, a rack of roast dinners, another of soufflés and a third of meringue can be finished simultaneously, in one Rational.

“Finishing is fast, fuss-free and delivers fantastic results, both for a la carte and banqueting,” says Rational’s Vic Brown. “The technology is equally suitable for preparing one meal or thousands of meals at once.”

For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar including ‘Finishing’, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com

Rational has introduced Retail Chef Academy, an exclusive series of free training and development seminars aimed at existing users of its Rational SelfCooking Center in retail and bakery environments.

The SelfCooking Center, which already dominates the UK catering market for combi ovens, is also proving popular in retail situations, says Paul Anderson, Sales Director of Rational UK.

“But our feedback suggests that many users of the SelfCooking Center use only a small proportion of its features. They might have chosen it for its ability to do specific tasks perfectly, such as bake-off - but they often don’t realise how versatile it is. Or they might simply want to change they way they prepare food and want to know more about how to adjust the programs.

“A good way to get the best of the system is to practice outside the pressure of the work environment, where everyone can relax and give their undivided attention. So we’ve organised these free days to make sure everyone knows what else their system can do.”

The SelfCooking Center is the only type of cooking unit needed for a huge variety of retail foods. It can do everything from simple bake-off to hot foods such as hams, pies and pastries, poultry, quiches, even rotisserie - and almost any variety of takeaway - while results can be consistently perfect.

Paul Anderson says the Retail Chef Academy day is structured around three specific approaches:

• How to use the SelfCooking Center to produce perfect and consistent results on their existing products.
• How to use its many other features to make work easier and faster.
• Ideas and tips on using the SelfCooking to create new products.

“We can structure the day to suit individuals,” he adds. “And we try to make the session suitable for both managers and line staff.”

To get the best out of the day, Rational suggests not only booking well ahead but also preparing the questions, topics and food items they want to cover. Retail Chef Academy seminars are now taking place regularly at locations throughout the UK and Ireland. The complete list of dates and venues is available at www.rational-uk.com.

To arrange to come to a free Chef Academy day, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-uk.com

The Rational SelfCooking Center is superb at preparing a perfect and varied breakfast with the minimum amount of fuss. Bakery products such as rolls, pretzels, muffins and croissants are just as successful in the SelfCooking Center as fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelettes and pancakes. And, for something even more substantial, ham, sausages, grilled tomatoes and fried potatoes can be freshly prepared and served from the breakfast buffet or directly to the table.

True to the Rational principle of “Select food, define result – that’s it!”, breakfast dishes work perfectly, with no monitoring. So a superior quality and varied breakfast is always possible with the SelfCooking Center – and customers will not only taste the difference, but appreciate the variety, too.

This opens up many new possibilities, and not only for conventional breakfasts in hotels or restaurants. For example, in corporate catering it reduces dependence on local bakers and suppliers. By using frozen product, baked-off in the SelfCooking Center,you gain flexibility in purchasing and preparation, and save money. Plus there is no wastage, as only the quantities actually needed are cooked.

For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar, including breakfast catering, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. The seminars take place regularly at venues across the UK. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com

A conventional grill, whether electric, gas or charcoal, takes up all the attention of a chef, so that he doesn’t miss exactly the right moment for turning the food to give, for example, perfectly cooked steaks.

The SelfCooking Center from Rational can make a huge difference to this - both by reducing the attention needed for cooking and by cooking many different types of item at once. Not only can it grill to perfection - for instance, steaks, spare ribs or seafood - but it can prepare baked potatoes, French fries or vegetables and other items at once. It can also take the place of many other cooking appliances, such as grills and deep-fat fryers.

To use the SelfCooking Center as a grill, place the raw (or even frozen) food on the CombiGrill accessory grids, press a button to tell the unit what type of food is being grilled, the level of browning (from light to dark) and how well done you want it (rare to well done). That’s it.

A single SelfCooking Center can cook perfectly up to 108 steaks or fish fillets, automatically, without overseeing or turning the food. The CombiGrill adds the attractive grilling ‘grid’ pattern, even on vegetables. The system allows the kitchen to respond flexibly and quickly to demand, and also helps with planning the number of staff needed.

The Rational SelfCooking Center is available in six different sizes, and all can be purchased as electric or gas models. The gas versions are becoming increasingly popular at grilling situations, and are ideal where a reliable electricity supply isn’t available, particularly for alfresco situations – for example in open-air cafés or hotels with summer verandas.

For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com

Rational has introduced Chef Academy, an exclusive series of free one-day seminars for chefs who already own or operate Rational SelfCooking Center systems.

Chef Academy goes beyond the long-established Team Cooking Live seminars (which introduce chefs to the basic concept of Rational cooking).  Chef Academy chefs will already have seen the controls, understand the basic principles and started using the SelfCooking Center.

With chefs under greater pressure than ever, from costs, stress, staff shortages and slim gross profit margins, it’s crucial they make the best use of their equipment.  Rational’s research has shown that chefs often use only a small proportion of their SelfCooking Center’s features, and are unaware of how many other kinds of cooking equipment it can replace. 

So a Chef Academy day is devoted to exploring the tips, tricks and techniques for lowering cooking costs, reducing wastage and shrinkage, increasing cooking speed and boosting productivity.  And it’s a chance for chefs to try to stump the experts!  If there’s a tricky question, a novel method of cooking, it’s the perfect forum to ask.

“With Chef Academy we can structure the day to suit individual chefs,” says Paul Anderson, Sales Director of Rational UK.  “In short, we go beyond the ‘what’ of Team Cooking Live, and answer the ‘how’”.

At Chef Academy users are reminded how the SelfCooking Center can completely take over routine, time-consuming cooking tasks, and they can ‘unlearn’ tedious lessons of earlier generations of cooking equipment.   Select the food, choose the desired result – the SelfCooking Center does the rest.  It cooks everything perfectly, just how it’s supposed to be – from succulent, crispy roast chicken to rare steaks to perfectly poached salmon.  Meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, grilled or fried foods, soufflés, side dishes, bread, cakes and pastries.  Virtually everything can be prepared in a single SelfCooking Center.  And the results are always of the same consistently high quality.

To get the best out of the Chef Academy days, Rational recommends that chefs book well ahead and plan the questions and topics they wish to explore. Chef Academy seminars are now taking place regularly at locations throughout the UK and Ireland. The complete list of dates and venues is available at www.rational-uk.com . 

For more information on the Rational SelfCooking Center or to arrange to come to a free Chef Academy day, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944.  For product information and contact details see www.rational-uk.com

Stand N2305, Hotelympia 2008, 17 - 21 February, ExCeL London

Rational is bringing the reality show to Hotelympia 2008. One of the stand’s star attractions is a full service restaurant, where visitors can watch chefs in ‘real time’ (and under real pressure) as they prepare five star food and showboat their signature dishes for their lucky customers. All the food - from Stilton Soufflé to Beef Wellington to Baked Alaska - will be prepared in SelfCooking Centers, to demonstrate the units’ versatility.

Versatility is a key benefit with the SelfCooking Center. Whether you’re looking for the best-ever roast chicken, the perfect pizza or great tasting chips (with 80% less fat), then the Rational stand (N2305) has the answer. In fact, whatever you’re preparing, Rational has the perfect solution in the shape of the SelfCooking Center.

Rational invented combi cooking in 1976 and the company has been leading the combi oven market ever since. The SelfCooking Center cooks food automatically, using the most appropriate cooking processes for the food, whether roasting, poaching, steaming, baking or toasting - it can even prepare grilled and fried foods. And, says Rational, the food tastes better than ever.

Visitors can see demonstrations of the latest enhancements to the SelfCooking Center on the stand. They include bespoke trays and shelves to cook particular products - including baked potatoes, fried eggs and pizzas. Popular established accessories will also be on display, such as the CombiFry, which makes oven chips taste just as good as deep fried - without all the extra fat. (And who else but Rational could cook 400 portions of chips in fifteen minutes in one unit?) French fries cooked in the SelfCooking Center can contain up to 36% fewer calories and up to 80% less fat than conventional potatoes from a deep-fat fryer.

From Breakfast to Banqueting to Bombay Potato
Alongside the live restaurant Rational will run a demonstration theatre. Here the company will host TeamCooking Live seminars throughout each Show day on subjects as varied as breakfast and banqueting. There will also be special seminars covering ethnic foods, showing how to use the latest combi cooking technology to enhance the flavours of Chinese, Thai and Indian recipes.

Tickets for the theatre seminars are free and are allocated on a first come, first served basis. To book a place come to the stand on the day - it’s worth coming early if there’s a particular seminar you want to attend.

For more information on products and TeamCooking Live seminars freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944 or visit www.rational-UK.com

Rational

Rational says the SelfCooking Center takes combi oven technology to a new level. It produces top quality results because each product is baked in its perfect ‘baking climate’ (the correct balance of humidity and dry heat).   It handles everything: from biscuits, breads and rolls to cakes, pies, pizzas and soufflés. It even proves, fully automatically (all you do is select the ‘proving’ button).

The bakery package converts the SelfCooking Center to accept 600 x 400mm bakery trays, as opposed to the gastronorm trays the standard unit accepts. It is available for all models, with the option of roll-in trolley systems for the larger units.

“The SelfCooking Center makes baking a cinch, even for untrained staff,” says Rational’s Vic Brown. “So it’s perfect for all sorts of bakery outlets, from the high street craft baker to in-store bakeries and even for bake-off in convenience stores and garage forecourts. It ensures each product is baked in exactly the way you want, with consistent quality every time.” Just push the button to tell the oven what you’re baking, shut the door and let it get on with the job.

Alongside the baking mode, with its seven baking processes, the SelfCooking Center has eight other modes, each with a variety of baking and cooking processes built in.

For information and brochures, or to arrange to come to a free SelfCooking Center® ‘TeamCooking Live’ seminar, contact your dealer or freephone Rational UK on 0800 389 2944. For product information and contact details see www.rational-UK.com