Combination ovens can be a great addition to your kitchen, allowing you to cook with steam, hot air (convection), or a combination of both. Instead of buying both a steam oven and a convection oven, a combination oven (sometimes called a combi oven) allows you to use both methods while saving kitchen space. Keep reading to learn about this consolidation and the five ways combination ovens save space in a commercial kitchen.
These are the ways you can save space in a Commercial Kitchen:
Consolidation of Multiple Cooking Methods
Kitchens require a plethora of equipment in order to efficiently serve customers. While some equipment only has one use, such as a fryer, those individual uses are important for meeting customer demand and cooking everything properly. However, some pieces of single-use equipment are just a waste of space. Instead of wasting space and money on those pieces of equipment, look into appliances that can consolidate multiple cooking methods into one.
Since combination ovens use steam, hot air, and a combination of the two to cook, they consolidate multiple cooking methods into one appliance. Instead of needing separate appliances for all the related cooking methods, such as a convection oven for baking or a griddle for grilling, all your business will need is a combination oven. Without the need for so many different appliances, you’ll have more counter and floor space in your commercial kitchen and will be able to serve customers more efficiently.
Flexibility of Use
You may think you already have plenty of counter and floor space with the appliances you already have. But are those appliances flexible to use? Most kitchen appliances can only be set to one temperature at a time, limiting what and how much you can cook at once. This temperature limit wastes cooking space, preventing you from cooking more dishes at once and serving more customers.
You won’t have to worry about that temperature limit with a combi oven since they are flexible to use. This versatile appliance allows you to cook multiple different dishes at various temperatures, all at one time. Depending on the size of your combi oven, you’ll be able to cook several large dishes at once, or many small ones. No matter which you choose, or if you fluctuate between the two, you’ll be saving cooking space instead of wasting it. By saving cooking space, you’ll be able to cook more dishes and serve more customers, helping your business grow.
Easy Programmability
With cooks, servers, and bussers flowing in and out of your kitchen, you don’t want anyone getting in the way. Everyone needs to know what they’re doing and do that job as efficiently as possible. But when the appliances your kitchen uses aren’t efficient, your workers can’t be either. This means they stand around taking up valuable kitchen space and potentially getting in the way of other workers instead of doing their job.
Save space by adding an easily programmable combi oven to your kitchen. Instead of standing around waiting for a dish to finish in an oven or steamer, or constantly checking on something while it cooks on the stove, your cooks can easily program a combi oven with a few controls and a smartphone app. Combi ovens offer specific settings that you can program for individual dishes so your cooks can set it and forget it, moving on to the next task without worry. No one is standing around and waiting, taking up valuable kitchen space, if a combi oven is safely cooking dishes to perfection.
Diversity of Dishes
As we previously mentioned, combi ovens allow you to cook multiple dishes at once. But multiple dishes have multiple elements, and some cooks prefer to create those elements separately. They prefer to use one cooking method for the main part of the dish, such as the meat, and another cooking method for the side, such as a vegetable. While combi ovens offer different cooking methods, cooks may still worry that the offered cooking methods aren’t right for the food, and decide to cook those elements separately, wasting valuable cooking space.
Thankfully, combi ovens can cook a diversity of dishes to perfection. You can roast meat with a steam flow that keeps the meat moist and cuts down on cooking time. All you’ll need to do to cook fish is press one of those easily programmable controls we previously mentioned, and the oven will control the steam and temperature to cook the fish perfectly. Vegetables also do well in steam, retaining color, vitamins, and minerals, while becoming easy to chew. And if you feature baked goods on your menu, using a combination of steam and convection will create perfect breads, pies, and pastries that are moist on the inside and crisp on the outside.
Sizing Variety
At this point, you’re probably sold on a combi oven. You want to save kitchen, counter, and cooking space with this consolidated, flexible, programmable, and versatile appliance. But first, you have to find space for this new appliance to go. Most commercial kitchens aren’t easy to rearrange, even if the new appliance coming in is going to save space. Hauling out old appliances takes time and money you may not yet have. So, where can a combi oven go in the meantime?
The good news is that combi ovens come in a variety of sizes, so you can fit one in your kitchen no matter how limited your space is. There are standing ones with separate cabinets that are only 22 inches wide to fit into narrow sections of your kitchen. If you need it to fit on a counter, there are multiple sizes available, depending on how much counter space you have available. And if size isn’t an issue, there are large models that can fit up to twenty pans at once. Combi ovens come in whatever size you need.
Commercial combination ovens save kitchen space by consolidating cooking methods, allowing for flexible use, being easily programable, cooking diverse dishes well, and being available in a variety of sizes. While these are just five ways combination ovens save space in a commercial kitchen, this versatile appliance will help improve efficiency in your space regardless of how much space is available. DSL is happy to provide high-quality combi ovens of all sizes so you can save space and diversify your offerings at the same time.