There's a piece of equipment that's slowly been making its way into restaurant kitchen: the Blast Chiller. it does exaclty wat it sounds like: cool thing down quickly, using fast-moving cold air. This coming summer. LG is going to release a version of the refrigeration for home kitchens that
incorporates a small Blast Chiller for quickly cooling down cans of soda and bottles of wine.
They've been working with a small Blast Chiller/Shock Freezer by Irinox, the if -10. It will accommodate three 12x10-inch trays are placed inside the Blast Chiller and then a fan blows chilled air over the food, rapidly cooling it down. The rapid cooling reduces loss from evaporation during the cooling process and minimizes the size of ice crystals that form in the food when it is frozen. This is important because the larger ice crystals are, the more damage they do to the cells walls of the food. making it softer and less resilient. All of the liquid that seep out of the thawed of a food is loss, of weight, flavor and nutrients.
The Japanese have been using Blast-Chilling shock freezer for years to preserve the quality of freshly caught fish that they want to use for sushi. Food that is Blast-Chilled and thawed is almost identical to the fresh product. This is a huge benefit because it means that restaurant can take advantage of seasonal bounty and preserve it with minimal losses in quality and yield.
Rapid cooling down is wonderful as well for baked pasta dishes that you want to make ahead for sauce and braises. And the constantly circulating cold air and swallow containers cool down cooked foods more quickly and efficiently than the traditional ice bath.
In similar vein, we use the irinox when we work with butter-rich dough, such as laminations and pie crust. The Blast Chiller lets us reduce the waiting time periods between mixing, shaping and baking. Thia reduces oxidations on the dough, so that the finished baked goods pure, sweet, buttery flavor. We also chill yeasted dough to slow down the fermentation process. We will quickly chill down a well-reason dough in the order to shape it before baking.