50 Shades of CVap

Have you ever had one of those experiences where your chance encounter far exceeded your expectation?

Recently I was asked by the corporate chef of a chain restaurant for a CVap® solution to increase their yield on prime rib. Their current yield ranged from 75% to 82%, and the increase in beef prices had them pretty concerned about profit loss – not to mention the impact on their customers if they had to raise prices.

The chef wanted to cook and hold the prime rib overnight because that created their lowest yield. While the chef seasoned the prime rib, I set our CVap CAC507 Cook & Hold Oven to 135 F Doneness, 7 on the Browning, High Yield ON and set the cook time to 5 ½ hours. Once the oven preheated, we placed the prime rib in, hit start and left for the evening. The next morning we pulled the prime rib and did the weigh in. After a 5 ½ hour cook and 11 hours of hold the pre-purged yield was 93.32%!

He invited The Boss to the cutting and after some delicate inspection it was time to give it a try. The first comment: “Wow, it’s almost too tender…wait I don’t think I meant to say that”. Needless to say we had a good laugh.

During our rather long meat eating session they began talking about how they needed to find a way around water bathing, doming and rotating their cheesecake half way through the cook cycle in their convection oven. It was really an operational headache. Having had my fill of tender beef, I was ready for dessert so I said, “let’s make some cheesecake.”

We spent a little time making two of their cheesecakes. One, as usual, was placed in their convection oven (water bathed, domed and rotated) and the other was placed in the CVap Cook & Hold Oven at a setting of 200°F Doneness, 0 Browning, Constant Cook ON and set the cook time for three hours.

The result:

The CVap cheesecake used no water bath, no doming, and did not need to be rotated half way through the cook cycle like the convection oven cheesecake. By their words, the CVap cheesecake was: “Very creamy; silky; a quarter taller; crust is better; cuts cleaner.”

I expected them to be happy with the labor and operational savings, but I was not looking to create a better cheesecake for them. The convection oven cheesecake was great but was “drier on the tongue” and “a pain to make.”

Over the next few days we just got lost in the CAC507 oven. The chef prepped the items, and I got the CVap oven ready. The days just seemed to fly by while we were comparing CVap to their current items and eating, and eating, and eating.