The Modern Kitchen

Basic Techniques & Modern Conveniences Introduction

Convenience of cooking should be an important factor when choosing cooking methods. Here, we’ll discuss the challenges and benefits of the different styles of working.

The Classic Method vs the Modern Convenience Method

There are 2 distinct food preparation methods:

Classic method – Creating dishes from scratch

Modern Convenience method – Using ready-to-use or pre-prepared products to create basic recipes and bases

The Classic method

Benefits:

• More room for creativity
• Not limited to using ready-to-use products
• Staff takes pride in knowing the basics of cooking
• Control over ingredients used

Challenges:

• Lack of consistency
• Labour intensive
• Higher food and labour costs
• Larger space and higher electrical consumption
• Seasonality of ingredients
• Food safety issues

The Modern Convenience method

Benefits:

• Saves energy
• User-friendly
• Practical and saves time
• Low wastage
• Control over food quality
• Reduces food cost
• Prevents overproduction
• Easy to train kitchen staff
• Saves space
• Avoids problems of seasonal ingredients

Challenges:

• Kitchen staff may lack basic culinary knowledge
• Lack of creativity may produce similar-tasting products
• Limited to using ready-to-use products in preparing dishes
  

Considerations for Classical or Modern Convenience methods:

• Do you have enough skilled staff and time to prepare from scratch?
• Do you prefer to create bases from scratch?
• Are you selling pricey dishes using expensive, high-end ingredients?
• Are you limited by dish prices?
  

Examples of Modern Convenience products

Unilever Food Solutions provide a wide range of ingredients that save time and money, yet produce tasty and attractive dishes for kitchens across the world.

Comparison of preparation methods

This is a comparison between the Classic method on the left and the Modern Convenience method on the right: