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Prime cooking Equipment - Types
Prime cooking equipment is at the heart of a domestic or commercial kitchen, and fall into four main types.
Open top burners
Open top burners are either gas burners or electric radiants with an oven underneath, with a greater number of burners or radiants available for very busy kitchens. They can get very dirty very quickly, and you need to rugged enough to meet the demands of the kitchen and with ready availability of spare parts.
Solid Tops
Solid tops have a solid cast iron top heated underneath either by gas jets or electric elements, with an oven underneath, and can accommodate more pans than an open burner.
Boiling tables
With boiling tables, the top is the same as a standard cooking range, but there is no oven below, which can reduce purchase cost.
Island Suites
Island suites combine a cooking range with other prime cooking units such as a salamander grill, deep-fat fryer, pasta boiler, griddle and char grill. They can withstand punishing demands in busy kitchens.
Modular Island Suites
This system is usually bespoke in construction, with the individual cooking units that a kitchen needs bonded together for a seamless unit. There is a wide range of options which can include a burner range, a solid top, fryers, pasta cookers griddles, ovens, griddles, grills, char-grills, induction hobs – in fact any type of prime cooking process.
One-piece island suites
These are usually built as a solid cooking suite in the factory, and tend to stay with dry heat as a cooking medium rather than offering fryers and water-based cookers as part of the configuration.
The need for cleanliness
If you are part of the catering trade and involved with the preparation and cooking of food, you will be fully aware of the problems associated with the repair and maintenance to the catering equipment that you use on a daily basis at your establishment.
In a busy kitchen, food spillage on the cooking range is inevitable. When food falls into a gas burner it immediately burns, turns to carbon and blocks one or more of the jets, either completely or partially. This disrupts the gas flow and the mix of air and gas and causes energy conversion inefficiency. Any major spillages on gas jets should be cleaned immediately; minor spillages should be cleaned at the end of shift. A useful tip for gas cooking ranges is to have tin foil spread underneath the burners so spillages can be binned and wiping down made easier.
Cleaning behind and underneath cooking ranges is as important cleaning the surface. Most cooking ranges have an oven underneath and the same cleaning principles surrounding spillages and gas burner efficiency apply. What is common to both electric and gas cooking range ovens is that door abuse costs money: doors need closing firmly, not slamming, which will give premature hinge and closing fastener damage.
Electric hob cooking ranges are built around stainless steel surfaces. The hobs will burn off any food spillage, but other spillage will drip onto the stainless steel top. Stainless steel used in cooking range construction is tough and polished to make cleaning easy. Scrubbing burned-on food debris with hard wire scrubbers will damage the surface of the stainless steel and lead to harder work to keep the stainless steel clean.
In summary, clean any spilt food from a range immediately; ensure gas burner jets are not clogged; clean pan supports weekly; putting sheets of tin foil under the gas burners makes cleaning easier; clean oven cavities weekly. Don’t use harsh abrasives on stainless steel, have pans too near the edge of the range, slam oven doors or leave jets turned on when there is no cooking.
What we offer
We have a wealth of knowledge and experience gained by many years of close involvement with the catering equipment maintenance industry. We completely appreciate the urgency of a repair, and this is addressed before any routine maintenance that may be in the queue, to ensure that your key catering equipment is a producing product and earning money rather than standing idle and awaiting repair. We clean and service cooking ranges, convection ovens, toasters, fryers, servery counters, pizza ovens, coffee machines, dish washers, glass washers, food mixers, meat slicers, water boilers, tilting kettles, bratt pans, bain maries, food processors, combination ovens, steam ovens, grills, griddles and boilers, and our engineers are all Corgi-registered.