An Essential Care Home Commercial Kitchen Guide
The kitchen is the heartbeat of a care home, providing warm meals, comforting cups of tea and countless treats.
It’s in constant use and requires commercial kitchen equipment that can withstand the heat. By investing in the right kitchen pieces, you can ensure your care home’s kitchen runs smoothly and productively, giving you peace of mind you are meeting every requirement.
Care Home Catering Regulations
UK care homes are inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to ensure they’re meeting Regulation 14 of the Health & Social Care Act 2008, which indicates their catering facilities offer “nutrition and hydration to sustain life and good health”.
Care homes must also cater to individual preferences, religions, cultural backgrounds, and dietary requirements to ensure their residents get adequate nutrition from their food. This means fresh, healthy food which can be safely cooked and served.
To help care homes reach these expectations, the right commercial catering equipment plays a significant role. When servicing multiple meals daily, they rely on energy-efficient, high-performing and reliable equipment. Something the experts at Inox can support them with.
Key Considerations For Your Commercial Kitchen
Whether you’re fitting a new kitchen for your care home or need to replace outdated equipment with a more efficient solution, there are a few factors you need to consider:
- How many residents do we need to feed at mealtimes?
- How will we stop items like cups and cutlery from spreading outbreaks?
- How will we prepare and cook for such a large volume of people?
- How will we clean used dishes to the required standard?
- What is the end-to-end process with regard to food storage capacity, food rotation and delivery frequency?
With this information, you’ll have a better idea of what type of catering equipment you need for your care home and how to allocate it within your budget.
Which Pieces Of Catering Equipment Does Your Care Home Need?
Commercial Cooking Equipment
A care home’s kitchen tends to be used for large parts of the day: cooking food, serving up or preparing for the next meal. Therefore, multi-purpose and versatile cooking equipment such as combi ovens are most beneficial.
Combi ovens hold multiple sections, allowing you to cook various dishes with one appliance. Not only does this save you space in your kitchen, but it also saves you time, money, and energy, with consistent cooking results. They also:
- Are capable of performing 8 of the 12 cooking methods used in a care kitchen
- Use 60% less energy
- Lock in nutrients, vitamins and flavours
- Reduce shrinkage, equalling more servings
- Reduce cooking times
- Allow rapid regeneration of meals
- Have large capacities
- Require one-touch cleaning
Range cookers are an alternative cooking appliance for care homes as their robust construction provides durability and reliability for high levels of use. Available in 4-burner or 6-burner gas hob variations, you can combine them with other kitchen equipment such as fryers or grills, meaning range cookers can perform 10 of the 12 cooking requirements within a kitchen.
Commercial Refrigeration Equipment
Adequate refrigeration appliances for care homes often come down to how much space they have available and how many residents they’re feeding, as they’ll require commercial fridges and freezers to store supplies safely.
You can optimise your refrigeration facilities by utilising your kitchen’s layout, opting for taller, upright fridge units or under-counter refrigeration options that can double up as worktop space. As they are constantly in use, you also want to choose energy-efficient and reliable pieces to save money on bills and avoid food waste.
Care homes also benefit from blast chillers, which rapidly cool cooked food to minimise bacteria whilst maintaining flavour and nutritional value. However, whichever refrigeration setup you choose, you must comply with the HACCP food safety guidelines.
Commercial Warewashing Equipment
Fast, efficient and thorough warewashing is essential for a successful care home kitchen. With three meals and hundreds of drinks being served daily, you need a good quality glass and a dishwasher to keep up with demand.
You must also ensure it meets health and safety regulations by washing at 60 to 65 degrees and rinsing at 80 to 85 degrees. This not only complies with hygiene and infection control but also keeps your staff and residents safe and aligns with CQC standards.
Our experts at Inox can help you source and install the right commercial warewashing equipment, fitting it into the layout of your kitchen and meeting the requirements of your care home.
Get in Touch With Our Experts Today
At Inox, we are commercial kitchen experts. We understand that every professional kitchen has different requirements and needs. If you’d like more advice or information about care home kitchen equipment, then get in touch today and one of our expert team will help.
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