High technology, multi-functionality and sustainability are the driver trends of the new professional appliances
The 41st edition of Host Milano, the international fair dedicated to the world of catering and hospitality, has recently ended. During the event the big players in the sector presented innovations of great interest, showing the latest solutions designed to make modern catering more efficient, sustainable and functional.
The news concern the three sectors of the Horeca world – hotels, restaurants and coffee bars – for which, every year, research and development professionals design equipment aimed at speeding up and simplifying work, with great regard also to cost savings and environmental sustainability.
From these premises, in almost all categories, products were conceived with three elements in common: multi-functionality, saving of resources and raw materials and digitalisation, factors that can really make a difference in the daily work of all operators in the sector.
Key word: optimization
As the people working in the Horeca sector know, the greatest difficulty in this job is the rationalization of work, limiting waste. End customers, in fact, are often numerous and very demanding and it is necessary to be perfectly organized in order to respect the time table obtaining final professional results, without making too many mistakes and saving as much as possible resources and raw materials. A challenge that can only be faced with reliable, precise and efficient appliances.
For this reason, most of the solutions offered on the market are very versatile, so as to allow a different use of them in any occasion or to choose the perfect configurations for one’s own needs.
Professional appliances such as blast chillers are very good examples of products that can be totally customized, with solutions that cool or keep food hot or that perform both functions and many others. The most advanced blast chillers offer a wide choices of specific modes for the gourmet kitchen, for pastry and bakery or for the preparation of ice cream. Operators can choose only certain available functions or purchase the top of the range, able to respond to all the most common needs, from cooling to slow cooking, up to drying.
Preparation in the foreground
In a professional kitchen there are numerous preliminary operations to cooking and they must be carried out with precision and speed so as not to preclude the final result of the recipe. A functional appliance for many of the food preparation activities is the grater which, in the professional versions, is able to chop many different ingredients quickly and in various sizes, from bread to cheese to dried fruit. It is therefore ideal for catering, pastry or bakery.
The quality models are very solid, easy to disassemble and clean and suitable for intensive use.
The same characteristics must also be present in other specific types of food preparation appliances, such as meat grinders, tomato squeezers and fresh pasta making machines, now increasingly full of functions that ensure precision, choice between different operating modes and simplicity of use.
The need to speed up the operations of food preparation, in order to obtain high-level final results, gave life to some very functional and advanced appliances that deserve a special mention, such as the ultrasound machine for the meat and vegetables maturation: a tool that greatly accelerates the time required to soften the meat and let the vegetables ripen, a solution that also brings great benefits in the rational use of raw materials and their storage.
In this regard, it is always useful to make use of vacuum storage, a method now used both in professional and domestic environments, thanks to the offer of increasingly practical and sophisticated systems.
Increasingly smart and eco-friendly cooking
Increasing attention is being given to energy savings, which is an important element for cost control in the professional field. The proposals in the cooking area, both with regard to the ovens and the hobs, aim to cut energy consumption while offering high performance and numerous possibilities to customize any products. The ovens differ for the typical needs of gourmet cuisine on the one hand and for those peculiar to pastry on the other. As in the smart home, even the professional sector increasingly offers connected devices, which allow functions to be activated remotely, control the progress of cooking but also consumption. In the cooking sector design is another characteristic standing out, especially in the structuring and organization of the different modules that compose the kitchen, which must always be more practical and ergonomic and, once again, customized according to the specific needs of users and spaces.