Hi to healthcare caterers,
I wanted to share with you all a revelation we have stumbled across in IDDSI production. Its not £1000s of pounds of equipment or massive bits of technical kit to make chefs drool and managers wince with the price tags. To be clear I’m not selling the stuff, that’s for them as a company to do, but as an innovation for healthcare, time, labour and money saver it’s the best I’ve come across.
I just as many people did when energy prices started to shoot up like a rocket, wanted to purchase an air fryer. Its also safe to say my beloved wife isn’t the greatest cook in the world, I love her dearly, but she didn’t marry me for my looks. I stumbled across a Ninja 15 in 1 cooking centre and found even the most inexperienced cooks can crack out a very decent meal with the probe and pre-set cooking programs.
This bit of kitchen porn speaks for itself in versatility and capabilities, being able to pressure cook, air fry, steam, steam fry make yogurt, prove and bake bread the list goes on and to the chef in a kitchen this thing is amazing. However after playing with it for a few weeks and getting to know the little Ninja I realized its bloody amazing at IDDSI foods.
For example, I can cook 6 chicken breasts under pressure in 20 minutes, the breasts are larger, puffed, tender, and perfect after running through with a knife for level 5 IDDSI, the stock from the pressure cooking added into the puree and reintroduced to the chopped chicken gives back the moisture and enhances the flavour I could claim big effort and time spent but I be honest, I put the chicken in with a little water, shut the lid, pressed start and came back when it beeped. This was the first baby steps to a massive overhaul of how we produce IDDSI foods. For those out there struggling with protein getting it to a smooth and silky level 4 add Quorn to the stock in the pot and puree with the protein item before passing, this gives volume, smooths out the puree along with the obvious nutritional values.
We had previously invested in a very expensive bit of kit for pureeing and cooking foods a year or so ago, you can make your own mind up as to the make and so on but suffice it to say it was over £1,300. It’s a good bit of kit, its on all the TV shows making purees and if you have the cash why not splash out, but it started playing up and with the constant cleaning the labels on buttons stated to wear off and was becoming a pain. I kept looking at the Ninja products as I was so massively impressed with the 15 in 1, I purchased a Ninja soup maker for under £130, this thing makes purees better than the other bit of kit at a tenth of the price. Its so good at it I ordered another 3 of them so we had a bank of 4 purees working all at once and with just the touch of 1 button. We have developed recipes to produce purees perfect every time with almost no interaction whatsoever. We have shown the Ninja kit to visiting professionals, all so impressed at the results had purchased Ninja kit before arriving home that day and use then constantly.
The food processor was nest to catch my eye, the pulse function starts and stops the blade letting foods drop back before starting again, along with multiple blades makes perfect level 5 IDDSI again with a touch of 1 button.
We at The Close have been producing texture modified foods way before IDDSI came along, we started with silicone moulds from Jo Bonser, a true champion of dining with dignity and a font of knowledge at #HCSUK. Then IDDSI came along, and we went on a course with Oak House Kitchen, both James and Preston being the most knowledgeable and giving in time and advice of any individuals I’ve ever come across in healthcare. Each step progressing and making the foods we produce a little better.
I see many, many photos taken in lovely, staged photo shoots or training days, some with level 4 IDDSI purees with sauces mid flow from a spoon (how the hell does that pass testing?) or absolute sharp edges, frozen, defrosted, steamed, baked and god knows what to be a level 4 puree and finished with shaved chocolate on them and so on. The photos I have attached are from lunch service last night, not a photo shoot, not staged, from real world real food given to real people. All produced with ease using the Ninja products I have spoken of at the push of one button.
At this point your all reading this looking for the catch, so to save you looking and wondering her it is. I myself and Callum Chapman the Catering manager at The Close have spent a lot of time developing recipes and with the assistance of Danny Silcock at brakes giving advice on enhancing flavour profiles and nutritional values we have come up with a core of step by step recipes for our chefs to follow.
This is the tip of the iceberg, we also make a enhanced ice cream using a Ninja ice cream maker that’s around 5000 calories a tub, how’s that for fortified foods at the push of a button, but for now that’s a little insight of how we have made IDDSI production cheaper, quicker, easier and better than we have ever made before.
One other thing to add, if you do want to get any of the kit for your healthcare kitchens, don’t forget your blue light cards!
