The food industry across the world is slowly but steadily finding its lost ground. Restaurant chains are opening; hotels are home-delivering their customers’ favorite menu; people are opening their doors to outside food. While this has increased the demand for food deliveries, it has also increased the pressure on chefs to deliver great quality food at a much faster pace.

Perhaps this is why Combi Ovens are fast gaining the trust of chefs across the world. In India too, the acceptance of Combi Ovens has increased in post-Covid times. Combi Ovens are not only super easy to use, consistent in their cooking standard, but in a time like today’s, it also assures food safety like never before. This is the much-needed smart cooking system that can cook almost on its own, follow the chef’s instructions to the tee and deliver the same consistent quality dish every time you press the button. The icing on the cake is the oven’s excellent self-cleaning function. At a time when food safety is paramount, you do not have to worry about hygiene and a clean kitchen. The state-of-the-art Combi Ovens are self-cleaning and can be cleaned with the press of a button.

What is a Combi-Oven or Combi-Steamer?

It is a cooking system used in professional kitchens for bulk food preparation. A commercial Combi Oven has three cooking modes – steam, convection (dry heat), and a combination of steam and convection (dry heat). Using these three modes of cooking, the Combi Oven can cook anything to everything; from low heat cooking to retain nutrition and taste to high flame roasting and steaming, the Combi Oven offers all options.

Steam cooking: This mode is used primarily to steam or poach vegetables, seafood, and lots more. The use of warm steam to cook food helps retain the soft and juicy texture of your dish.

Convention cooking: A great way to roast, bake and fry. This tried and tested conventional dry air cooking gives you great quality pizza, fries, and roasted chicken. You also get the perfect brown shade which makes your dish look delicious as well.

As the name suggests, this gives you the best of both. So, while it provides the perfect texture and color of dry cooking, your dishes also remain tasty and juicy as the moisture is retained during cooking. This is a great option to steam or braise your vegetables and your meat.

Combi Oven is the smart choice because you can cook anything, from multi-cuisine dishes to Indian delicacies, by easy programming, and you get the same quality consistency every time. The smart Combi Ovens deliver the best result with minimum human assistance leaving the chef with more time to do his other tasks. One can also multi-load, which means different kinds of dishes that can be cooked using the same cooking code even though each might be needing a different cooking time, can be prepared simultaneously. Meaning, a quick-delivery order of 15 plates of kebabs and ten large pizzas can be made simultaneously, saving both time and energy.

What are the benefits of using Combi-Oven?

The benefits of Combi Oven are far too many to ignore.

• Save on manpower cost: Combi Ovens can cook with the least human intervention and also helps maintain social distancing in kitchens.

• Consistent, high-quality food every time: You can set your cooking parameters and get the same tasty food every time.

• Save on fuel/energy: You can cook multiple dishes in the same unit simultaneously and with higher efficiency.

• Save Space: Combi Oven can fit inside the smallest kitchen. Starts with a compact size of 1 square meter.

• Complete guarantee of food hygiene: Automated HACCP documentation.

• Combi Ovens are self-cleaning; so, you save on cleaning time and energy.

• Digital Kitchen Management: Smart Combi Ovens having network connectivity provision through Wi-Fi or ethernet can provide a solution to perform asset, hygiene, and recipe management from your desk or mobile. However far away the cooking systems may be.

Now, the question comes - who exactly can benefit from Combi Ovens. Well, you will be surprised to know even the smallest of food establishments are now using Combi Ovens. So, whether you are a restaurant or hotel owner, run a cafe, a catering business, a cloud kitchen or have a Quick Service Restaurant, the Combi Ovens, with its multiple variants and sizes, will surely be a blessing to your commercial kitchen and food business.

With so much and lots more, Combi Ovens are no less than a kitchen ninja at work, thus can be called as chef’s best friend.

Vikram Goel is Managing Director, RATIONAL India