Fast FRIMA amazes staff at Christ Church

FRIMA VarioCooking Center Multificiency shows its versatility and controllability at Oxford University

Christ Church is one of the largest colleges in the University of Oxford. Originally founded by Cardinal Wolsey as Cardinal's College in 1524, today it is a bustling academic community with about 450 undergraduate and 150 graduate students.

The busy kitchen at Christ Church prepares food for the various college dining rooms including the magnificent 300-seater Tudor Hall which boasts an impressive hammer-beam roof and stained glass windows. The adjacent McKenna Room, seating up 47 guests, is available both in term time and vacations for private dining. When the other dining areas are added in, the kitchen can be catering for up to 450 meals at any one time, with styles varying from student-type cafeteria catering to fine dining, banquets and formal afternoon teas.

With such a varied output, kitchen equipment needs to be reliable, easy to use and able to tackle a diversity of tasks. Chris Simms, executive head chef at Christ Church is responsible for the smooth running of the kitchen and is always looking for new equipment that will both make life easier for staff and improve food quality.

He uses two of the latest FRIMA VarioCooking Center Mulitificiency units – a 112+ and a 211+. They combine all the functions of a kettle, fryer, griddle, bratt pan, tilting pans and pressure cooker in one unit. It is this versatility that attracted Chris to the FRIMA.

“We use the FRIMAs for a wide range of jobs in the kitchen, from bulk cooking of stews to sous vide,” says Chris. “The sous vide has been a bit of a bonus we didn’t expect. It’s the FRIMA’s precise temperature control that makes it so good for this type of cooking.”

This temperature control is especially good for making sauces such as béchamel. “They don’t burn or stick,” says Chris. “It makes bulk catering so easy.”

“We really make use of the fact that it cooks fast,” he says. “We can pressure cook whole joints to speed up our production. We’ve even cooked octopus this way without turning it rubbery!”

FRIMA’s intelligent cooking processes take over a lot of routine jobs, really easing the strain in the kitchen when service reaches peak times.

“We don’t use pots of water on the range to cook vegetables anymore,” says Chris. “We just drop the veg into the FRIMA’s baskets and the unit does the rest. It lowers the veg into the water at the right time and lifts them out again when they are ready. It’s fast and efficient. If the chef gets distracted, there’s no problem, the veg won’t be overcooked. The FRIMA takes care of that.

“It’s a boon for breakfast service, too. Scrambled egg doesn’t catch and the pans are easy to clean out afterwards, ready for re-use on a completely different dish in a couple of minutes.”

One of the other reasons for installing the new FRIMAs at the Christ Church kitchens is its efficient use of energy.

“Many kitchens now are looking to run more electric equipment. It’s a cleaner technology and safer than cooking with gas,” explains Chris. “In old buildings such as ours insurance companies prefer electric appliances. Open gas flames can be a real hazard. The FRIMA’s energy efficiency is another plus point.”

“It’s such new technology that we are still finding out what it can do. In fact the more we use it the more uses we find for it. It’s not like a traditional bratt pan – we are amazed at everything it can do,” says Chris. “We love the control over the cooking with have with the FRIMA. The temperature probe ensures everything is cooked perfectly and, for speed in volume cooking, it can’t be beaten. It’s more than very good, it’s brilliant.”

Chris and the team at Christ Church have been so impressed with their FRIMAs that they have already ordered another one.

For information and brochures, or to come to a free Cooking Live demonstration, call FRIMA UK on 0845 680 3981, email info@frima-uk.co.uk or visit www.frima-uk.co.uk

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Christ Church Oxford – Nov-13

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VarioCooking Center is a registered trademark of FRIMA International

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