Share Our Strength is hosting the third in a series of Great American Dine Out webinars on July 22 from 3 to 3:30 p.m. EDT, to provide strategies and ideas for restaurant operators who want to participate in the dine out for charity, which takes place from Sept. 19 to 25. Amanda Hite, founder and CEO of Talent Revolution, and Diana Hovey, senior vice president of marketing for Corner Bakery Café, will share their insights and expertise on the power of social media and cause marketing as business-building tools, and discuss what makes the Great American Dine Out such an easy, successful program.
Talent Revolution's Amanda Hite
The Great American Dine Out is a week-long, nationwide event in which participating restaurants donate a portion of proceeds to help end childhood hunger in America. It is a flexible program, meaning operators can decide how they want to implement and promote it.
Corner Bakery's Diana Hovey
American foodservice, retailers and consumers discard more than 96 billion pounds of good food each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Despite many American diners' insistence for super-size portions at deep discounts, the troubled economy of the past two years has forced many restaurant operators to re-evaluate the need to serve a 16-ounce steak with a 9-ounce side dish. By offering smaller portion sizes and portioning out sides and toppings more efficiently, restaurants can save on food costs and diminish their overall food waste. Here, Chef's editors have rounded up some of the companies that have taken the work out of preportioning proteins, sides and toppings.
Cuisine Solutions offers a line of chef-created,
fully cooked and pasteurized frozen food for foodservice. Cuisine Solutions has perfected the sous-vide cooking technique, a method whereby food is hermetically sealed, slow-cooked and pasteurized under precise temperatures in its natural juices. The pressure of the vacuum-packing infuses the herbs and spices deep into proteins, resulting in intense flavors and succulent, tender textures. The sealed cooking process creates products with 10 to 15 percent more moisture content than conventional cooked items. Products include a variety of preportioned fish and seafood items, flavored chicken breast and roulade, duck confit, beef and veal, pork, lamb, pasta dishes, vegetable preparations and a variety of classical and ethnic sauces--all with multiple reheating options. (Pictured: braised beef top blade in red wine and beer.) The 18-month shelf life of items allows storage of Cuisine Solutions products in your freezer. Visit www.cuisinesolutions.com, and click on the Professional tab.
The foodservice division of Hormel Foods has introduced Always Tender Oven Roasted Pork, fully cooked boneless, center-cut loins and tenderloins. Always Tender Oven Roasted Pork eliminates the worry of overcooking the notoriously lean pork loin by using a proprietary cook process that results in consistently tender and juicy pork. The product gives operators the time to create exciting and unique pork dishes such as Thai pork quesadillas (pictured, below), grilled pork chops with blue cheese and ginger and pomegranate-glazed pork. Additionally, pork offers a cost-effective and leaner alternative to beef. For more information, visit www.hormelfoods.com.
The Marzetti Foodservice family of products for restaurant use offers a variety of single-serve sizes, as well as bulk packaging. Marzetti sauces and dressings come in gallon, pouch and cup options, depending on operator needs in a variety of flavors from full-bodied, rich, tangy to lightly sweet, fat-free and light dressings. Marzetti's Slaw Dressing has a smooth, creamy homemade flavor great for potato salad recipes, macaroni salad and deviled eggs. Mayonnaise, mustard, barbecue and other sauces provide toppings for your specialty dishes. Marzetti Frozen Pasta Inc. has expanded for foodservice applications into a wide variety of convenient precooked products that save time and labor. Preparation with precooked products is fast, easy, convenient and with little or no waste. Remove just the amount you need from the freezer, drop in boiling water to thaw for approximately 30 seconds, and it's ready to serve. Marzetti products are made from the finest ingredients and then frozen fresh resulting in pasta that looks fresher and tastes better. Visit www.marzettifoodservice.com.
Kettle Cuisine Foodservice offers a range of soups, chilis and chowders in sizes ranging from bulk to cups with flavor and nutrition profiles to meet all your customers' tastes and needs. Timeless and regional favorites as well as globally influenced flavors satisfy any palate. (Pictured: Hungarian Mushroom soup with fresh mushrooms, Kettle Cuisine beef stock, light cream, sour cream, dill, Hungarian paprika and Madeira wine.) Kettle Cuisine also offers vegetarian, dairy- and gluten-free, organic, low fat and everyday wellness options for those with special dietary requests. Additionally, Kettle Cuisine recently rolled out a newly expanded suite of product information and product promotion tools, including an ingredient and nutritional information nutrient content matrix, product specification sheets, countertop promotional signs and menu/calendar templates. Visit www.kettlecuisine.com/foodservice.
Chef John Hubschman was an executive chef in fine-dining restaurants for 20 years before launching Epicurean Butter six years ago to offer a line of infused butters, combining grade AA butter with all-natural ingredients using proprietary recipes. The compound butters come in spreadable form in tubs, as well as in preportioned coins and logs for time and cost savings. Operators can choose from a variety of sweet flavor profiles, including sweet cinnamon, orange honey and honey pecan, or savory flavors, such as balsamic peppercorn, chimichurri, black truffle, Chardonnay shallot and Tuscan herb.
The butters have a three-month refrigerated shelf life and nine-month frozen shelf life for extended storage needs. For more information, including serving suggestions, visit www.epicureanbutter.com.
The California Table Grape Commission is calling on foodservice chefs to create the best grape recipes for its 2010 Foodservice Chef's Recipe Contest. The top three winners will each receive cash prizes and national publicity for their recipes. Suggested categories include starters, small plates, entrées, salads, sides and desserts.
Contestants can submit entries via e-mail to recipecontest@grapesfromcalifornia.com. The deadline is Nov. 1. For contest rules and entry forms, visit www.grapesfromcalifornia.com.
National Restaurant Association (NRA) members now have access to a suite of nutrition-analysis providers at discounted rates to help them plan and enhance their menus. This partnership comes on the heels of President Obama signing the healthcare reform bill into law in March, which includes a provision that creates a national, uniform nutrition-disclosure standard for restaurants.
The NRA partnered with three nutrition-analysis providers to offer personalized services to restaurants of all types based on their different needs: FoodCALC, Healthy Dining and Silliker.
MenuCalc, a FoodCALC product, is a web-based recipe nutrition-analysis software solution designed for restaurant operators that provides easy-to-use, low-cost options based on individual needs. For more information, visit www.menucalc.com.
Healthy Dining offers a team of nutrition professionals, registered dietitians and a doctoral-level researcher to provide nutrient analysis (calories, fat, sodium, etc.), allergen declaration, development of gluten-free menus and guidance in complying with menu labeling legislation. For more information, visit www.healthydiningfinder.com.
Silliker offers expert laboratory, technical and information services to help companies comply with menu labeling requirements. Chemists and research and development professionals can help substantiate nutrition claims and address analytical challenges posed by variables in menu item preparation. For more information, visit www.sillikerrestaurantnutritionals.com.
SPONSORED POST
In recent years, any talk of fried chicken was almost always accompanied by a summary of the health risks. In 2010, however, popular food Web site Epicurious said fried chicken is primed for a renaissance, citing the dish as one of the top food trends for 2010. So what's a health-conscious operator to do? Go ahead and serve up some fried chicken prepared in the RATIONAL SelfCooking Center®.
Fried foods cooked in the SelfCooking Center have all the taste of oil-fried foods, but up to 80 percent less fat than deep fried foods. Instead of using expensive, fattening oil, the unit cooks fried foods with its patented airflow technology that circulates through the specially designed CombiFry baskets.
The CombiFry has been recently redesigned with a wave formation across the entire base of the basket, as opposed to the large curvature on the base of the previous generation CombiFry. The new wave formation ensures that the foods lay unevenly to prevent sticking. Each redesigned CombiFry wire basket can hold up to 2 1/2 pounds of fries and 20 to 26 baskets can fit into the SelfCooking Center 202 unit.
In addition to having a lower fat content, fried chicken and other fried foods prepared in the SelfCooking Center have 36 percent fewer calories than their oil-fried counterparts. Consumers enjoy reduced amounts of fat and calories with CombiFry foods, while operators save on the costs associated with purchasing, storing and disposing of oil. Oil-free fried foods increase efficiency as well. In the SelfCooking Center, operators can cook up to 200 servings of fries or chicken tenders in as little as 15 minutes.
RATIONAL provides a hands-on experience with the SelfCooking Center and the CombiFry accessory through its TeamCooking Live events. Register for TeamCooking Live at www.rationalusa.com. The events, which take place on a range of dates at over 100 venues nationwide, are guided by one of the company's culinary consultants.
WaterScapes, the casual fine-dining restaurant at Marina Inn at Grande Dunes, Myrtle Beach, S.C., has been named a Platinum Partner in South Carolina's Sustainable Seafood Initiative, launched by the South Carolina Aquarium. It is the first restaurant in Myrtle Beach to receive this recognition from the program, which encourages restaurants statewide to make local, environmentally friendly seafood selections for their menus.
The dining room at WaterScapes
The Sustainable Seafood Initiative ranked WaterScapes the highest possible score because it found that the restaurant's menu went above and beyond the program's basic requirements. The fish served at WaterScapes are hand-selected off the fishing boats in Murrells Inlet and featured nightly with local selections like hog snapper, rock hinds, triggerfish, black bass and amberjack.
For more information about WaterScapes, visit its website.
Restaurants & Institutions magazine recently named The Hotel Hershey a winner of the Ivy Award, which honors the best restaurants and foodservice operations in the industry.
Each year, past Ivy Award winners nominate commercial and noncommercial foodservice organizations for this award. Winners are selected by votes from the magazine's 140,000 trade professional readers. In April, Reed Business Information-US announced R&I would close, though The Hotel Hershey will still be named a member of R&I's Ivy Society.
Other 2010 winners include Ball State University, Muncie, Ind.; Craft and Le Bernardin restaurants, New York; The Slanted Door, San Francisco; and Royal Caribbean Cruises.
For additional information about The Hotel Hershey, visit www.thehotelhershey.com.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed landmark legislation requiring that shelled whole eggs sold in California come from cage-free hens as of Jan. 1, 2015. This effectively means that whole eggs served in every restaurant across the state will be cage-free by 2015. The bill, A.B. 1437, backed by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), follows on the heels of the landslide passage of Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act in California.
"By signing this bill, Governor Schwarzenegger has taken an important step in protecting animal welfare in a way that will also improve food safety for consumers across California," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the HSUS, in a statement. "Californians have made it clear that they don't want unsafe eggs from hens crammed into cages, and we applaud the legislature and governor for heeding this call."
The digital edition of the July 2010 issue of Chef Magazine is now online through the Chef Web site. This digital edition features all the same great content as the print edition, plus online exclusives on breakfast recipes and special event hors d'oeuvres. To access the issue, click the icon below. You can also register on the Chef Web site to receive e-mail notification when each new digital magazine is available for viewing.
About
Chef's Stirrings is the official blog of Chef Magazine, the industry publication for restaurant and foodservice professionals. The blog offers culinary news and online exclusives from the editors ofChef.
Talent Revolution's Amanda Hite
Corner Bakery's Diana Hovey
fully cooked and pasteurized frozen food for foodservice. Cuisine Solutions has perfected the sous-vide cooking technique, a method whereby food is hermetically sealed, slow-cooked and pasteurized under precise temperatures in its natural juices. The pressure of the vacuum-packing infuses the herbs and spices deep into proteins, resulting in intense flavors and succulent, tender textures. The sealed cooking process creates products with 10 to 15 percent more moisture content than conventional cooked items. Products include a variety of preportioned fish and seafood items, flavored chicken breast and roulade, duck confit, beef and veal, pork, lamb, pasta dishes, vegetable preparations and a variety of classical and ethnic sauces--all with multiple reheating options. (Pictured: braised beef top blade in red wine and beer.) The 18-month shelf life of items allows storage of Cuisine Solutions products in your freezer. Visit www.cuisinesolutions.com, and click on the Professional tab.
Kettle Cuisine Foodservice offers a range of soups, chilis and chowders in sizes ranging from bulk to cups with flavor and nutrition profiles to meet all your customers' tastes and needs. Timeless and regional favorites as well as globally influenced flavors satisfy any palate. (Pictured: Hungarian Mushroom soup with fresh mushrooms, Kettle Cuisine beef stock, light cream, sour cream, dill, Hungarian paprika and Madeira wine.) Kettle Cuisine also offers vegetarian, dairy- and gluten-free, organic, low fat and everyday wellness options for those with special dietary requests. Additionally, Kettle Cuisine recently rolled out a newly expanded suite of product information and product promotion tools, including an ingredient and nutritional information nutrient content matrix, product specification sheets, countertop promotional signs and menu/calendar templates. Visit www.kettlecuisine.com/foodservice.
Chef John Hubschman was an executive chef in fine-dining restaurants for 20 years before launching Epicurean Butter six years ago to offer a line of infused butters, combining grade AA butter with all-natural ingredients using proprietary recipes. The compound butters come in spreadable form in tubs, as well as in preportioned coins and logs for time and cost savings. Operators can choose from a variety of sweet flavor profiles, including sweet cinnamon, orange honey and honey pecan, or savory flavors, such as balsamic peppercorn, chimichurri, black truffle, Chardonnay shallot and Tuscan herb.
The California Table Grape Commission is calling on foodservice chefs to create the best grape recipes for its 2010 Foodservice Chef's Recipe Contest. The top three winners will each receive cash prizes and national publicity for their recipes. Suggested categories include starters, small plates, entrées, salads, sides and desserts.
National Restaurant Association (NRA) members now have access to a suite of nutrition-analysis providers at discounted rates to help them plan and enhance their menus. This partnership comes on the heels of President Obama signing the healthcare reform bill into law in March, which includes a provision that creates a national, uniform nutrition-disclosure standard for restaurants.
The dining room at WaterScapes
Restaurants & Institutions magazine recently named The Hotel Hershey a winner of the Ivy Award, which honors the best restaurants and foodservice operations in the industry.
