Multi Function Steam Cooker
Replicating the various methods used during conventional cooking. The cooker has an enclosed cooking environment with partial vacuum. Heating via steam directly or indirectly. Low to high speed mixing and cutting capabilities, with side scraper.
Ensuring higher yield and consistent quality and quantity as compared to other forms of processing.
Suitable products
Primarily design to produce processed cheese like mozzarella, cheddar, spreadable cream cheese and more.
The range of product it can process extends into sauce, soup, paste and more.
Heating via steam
Conventional cooking involves fire as the source of heating. The Multi Function Steam Cooker, uses steam. Directly injected into the product or circulated around the double jacketed walls to heat. Why so? It will be explained in the diagram below.
“Direct Steam Injection” method, the steam is introduced directly into the product within the bowl. The product absorbs heat from the steam directly, allowing it to reach the set temperature faster. The down side of this heating is the extra moisture introduced when the hot steam contacts the colder product, creating condensation. Which can be negated by doing a condensate test to find out how much extra moisture will be added and simply subtract it from the intended moisture of the overall recipe.
The scraper and mixing & cutting blades will allow your product to be mix homogeneously. Heat will be distributed evenly and thoroughly.
Pro – Very fast and efficient heating.
Con – Steam must be filtered and regulated to ensure consistent, clean and dry steam.
“Jacketed Steam Heating” works by transferring heat. Steam circulates round the jacketed walls of the bowl, heating the bowl surface up. Heat is then transferred to the products inside the bowl. It is similar to cooking with a pot or pan.
This method is slower as it is indirect heating. But this method, allows you to heat product that don’t go well with water like oil. Hence stir frying or deep frying your ingredients is achievable. Ingredients like garlic, onion, etc can be sauté before processing them further into a paste like form.
Pro – Able to stir fry or fry your ingredients, will not add extra moisture into your product.
Con – Slower heating time.
Vacuum
Most cooking is done openly, i.e the product is exposed to the environment. Losing water to evaporation is one, exposing the product to potential contamination is another. The rate of evaporation varies depending on the temperature and environment, hence making it very unpredictable. With a variable during production, how can one produce consistent result?
The Multi Function Steam Cooker process under a sealed environment with partial vacuum. In a sealed environment, the water evaporates and condenses back. Allowing the product to retain most of its moisture. Vacuum when turned on will suck out air from the bowl, causing a loss in moisture as well. Hence it can be use for controlled removal of moisture to create concentrate product. Under vacuum, the product expands allowing heat to penetrate at a higher rate. Coupled with the agitation, heat is distribution uniformly.
With the product heated fast and uniformly, a shorter cooking time can be expected. Translating into higher production yield.
Interchangeable knives ranging from blunt to sharp can be fitted depending on the requirement. Allowing for mixing or cutting. The speed can be adjusted to suit as well.
HMI with memory storage and IoT capability
The best part of all of these is that the various settings like temperature, vacuum, cooking duration, mixing or cutting speed, water dosing and more can all be set and stored into the system memory. Once saved, it can be easily recall for repeated usage.
The various saved memories can be locked with passwords to prevent operators from changing the parameters.
From the HMI, all the data related to the cooker can be view as well, giving operators on hand information of the processing. The information can be accessed remotely via a dashboard if the IoT option is chosen. User can just access the dashboard if there is internet connection and view the various data, history etc at their convenience. This allows for traceability for the entire production.
Interchangeable knives
The knives ranges from blunt to sharp which can be changed to suit the product requirement. Say the product is shear sensitive, a blunt knife can be used with a lower mixing speed. If the product requires a higher shear, a sharp knife and a high speed mixing can be use. It all depends on the requirement of the product.
With the knives, user have the option to load in ingredients without preparation. Using the sharp knives, with maximum rpm of 1600 range, the ingredients can be diced or pureed easily.
This saves time, effectively able to produce more within the given production time.
Conclusion
The Multi Function Steam Cooker is a processing machine that utilising steam together with vacuum and variable speed mixing/cutting to cook product efficiently and consistently. Which is something that traditional cooking methods find it hard to replicate.
We have a small scale demo unit for the Multi Function Steam Cooker, feel free to contact us to test it today! Call us at +65 67470269, or email us at enquiry@kse.com.sg