TV cooking programmes and competitive baking shows have never been more popular. Programmes like Master-chef and the iconic Bake Off attract huge audiences regardless of whether the watchers are avid ‘foodies’ taking copious notes or are simply eating a take-away curry cheese chips while they watch the competitors sweat it out onscreen. Contestants sweating onscreen is one thing, but when it comes to condensation on the tarts and pies, the public has something to say! Bake Off has been the subject of some contentious twitter storms in the last few years due to the lack of blast chiller available to contestants. Stress competitors trying to beat the clock are seen time and time again putting hot cakes into cold fridges and freezers in an effort to cool them down enough before icing. It is not good for the cakes and can induce that infamous ‘soggy bottom’. More importantly, there is a health risk too. One Bake off follower wrote
‘I think Lottie is the first person who drew attention to problems with it - when her baking melted everything else in the freezer and she described it as having 'freezer juice' on. I do hope that nobody is daft enough to do it for real, it's just asking for food poisoning’.
The lack of blast chiller is clearly not good for either the baked goods or the fridges/freezers themselves. Interestingly enough, The Professional version of the Bake-Off show always has a blast chiller available for the ‘real’ chefs. Kudos goes to the Masterchef franchise, whose kitchen equipment is always flawless and so, has a blast chiller for contestants. But then, a blast chiller is a very normal item to have in any working kitchen.
These days, no self-respecting commercial kitchen would be without its trusty blast chiller. They are an indispensable piece of equipment for any chef, whether they want to shock freeze food or to cool large quantities of cooked food quickly and safely. The Food safety authority of Ireland highly recommends the use blast chillers and shock freezers to preserve food without any dangers to the consumer. A commercial freezer chills and freezes food products and keeps them frozen over a prolonged period of time, but a blast freezer rapidly cools food by blowing forced chilled air over items placed inside. These specialized freezers have a number of different settings that can be selected depending on whether food is at room temperature, chilled, or hot. Blast chilling wins out over conventional chilling and freezing as there is a significant lessening in the loss of water content for meat, fish and poultry and better nutritional content for vegetables and ready meals. At Caterboss, we have a wide range of blast chillers available. The powerful and reliable Atosa EBF Blast Chiller has room for 5 racks (94lt) and can blast chill 25 kg with a temperature range of +70c to -20c. This would be the perfect model for any time sensitive cooking show or indeed, any restaurant, canteen or food producer dealing in volume.
Dessert chefs love blast chillers too. With a blast chiller, the cooling temperature of chocolate can be more easily regulated, the life of custard, mousse and sponge cakes can be extended, and they maintain a more intense taste. In ten things we learnt from MasterChef, the blast chiller is described as a must have, if only for its mousse-setting abilities.
‘Your domestic fridge-freezer is Toy Town compared to one of these; it's the must-have item for every keen cook… when you consider that these beasts can cool food down from 70C to 3C in 90 minutes’.
Last years Bake Off competition took place in some of the highest temperatures experienced by in the UK. Icing slipped off cakes and the contestants themselves were dripping puddles of stress and sweat. A blast chiller for their baked goods would have made all the difference to the final offerings. As one Tweet directed at producers said. ‘I think it's mad that you haven't invested in blast chillers for the contestants! You've only had 10 years...’ Master Chefs all over the world, whether on TV or working in their own kitchens, canteens and factories have embraced the wonders of the blast chiller. It is probably past time that Bake Off did too.
