PUNTOITALY N°1 -January - June 2012

THE ITALIAN MAGAZINE FOR INTERNATIONAL BUYERS IN GELATO, CONFECTIONERY AND TRENDY FOOD-AND-DRINK 61 zone, or bubble zone, when we choose to do something completely new instead of repeating what we already know for sure. Have you ever heard the sentence: “Why should I change?”. The use of the blast chiller begun in the ‘70s in France with the only goal of preparing safe food for hospitals. From then many things have changed and a good number of cooks have created new techniques using the blast chiller, not to mention the effort of blast chiller producers in im- proving the quality of their machines. LEGISLATION AND CAPACITY In France they consider a blast chiller a machine that is able to cool down a product from the temperature of 70°C to 3°C in 1 h and 30 mins. In Usa the cooling time required is the same, but the starting temperature is 90°C instead of 70°C. Gener- ally all the machines are tested to satisfied the American re- quirement. All the machines on the market state on their label the indication of the “production per cycle”. If on the blast The use of the blast chiller has many advantages in terms oftime and energy saving, longer shelf life and better workmanagement. chiller it states 25 kg/cycle it means that the machine is able to cool down 25 kg of hot food, evenly distributed on the trays, from 90°C to 3°C in 1 h and 30’. This is the only reliable indication you can trust. Sometimes the blast chiller is sold referring to its tray capacity, eg. 5 trays, but this number gives only the measure of its internal volume, not its cool- ing capacity; in fact you can find 5 tray blast chillers from 25 kg/cycle productions to less than 10 kg/cycle.