Foods and beverages: apparatus – Cooking – Automatic control
Patent
1996-07-15
1997-11-25
Simone, Timothy F.
Foods and beverages: apparatus
Cooking
Automatic control
99357, 99407, 99408, 99427, 99451, 99476, 99DIG14, 55220, 55DIG36, 126 21A, 126299R, A47J 3700, A47J 3704, F24C 700, F24C 1516
Patent
active
056900180
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for cooking a food product in a cooking chamber. The product is cooked by exposing it to a heat source, and the gasses which the product emits during cooking are drawn out of the apparatus through a ventilator. A filter device is provided for filtering the gasses prior to exhausting them in the open air. An air connection system links the filter device and cooking chamber to dissipate heat through convection.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
One popular food product is french fried potatoes which in considerable amounts are served in restaurants, fast food shops, cafeterias or from street vendors. French fried potatoes are served either alone as a meal by themselves or in connection with other courses. In any case, there is a demand for french fried potatoes being served freshly heated and crispy. Since french fried potatoes cannot be kept warm and crispy for a long time, the preparation must necessarily take place quickly and easily to transform the raw and possibly pre-processed material into the ready product.
This demand is predominantly met by deep-fat frying, where a basket containing a portion of potato strips is lowered into a pool of melted lard or cooking oil. The lard or the oil is quickly absorbed by the potato strips which thereby are heated and cooked to a crispy and crunchy consistency with an almost brown color, mainly deriving from the caramelizing of the sugar contents of the potato pieces.
When the potato pieces are cooked in this way they will have a fatty or oily content of 30%. Considering the very large amounts of french fried potatoes which are consumed, especially in industrialized countries, this popular food product can be a serious threat to national health. Consuming too much fat will in the long run lead to obesity and associated various diseases.
In order to eliminate these problems various apparatuses have been proposed for cooking low fat pre-processed potatoes. With these apparatuses it is possible to make crispy and tasty french fried potatoes with moderate fatty contents of approximately 6%.
In this way the problem of high fatty content deep-fried potatoes has been relieved, but in deep-frying as well as in more simple apparatus there still remains the problem that the process emits smoke and odors out into the surrounding air to the inconvenience of customers and work staff. Some apparatuses have been supplied with filters for cleaning the air before it reaches the room but these apparatuses have not fully lived up to the demands made.
Moreover, commercial cooking apparatuses must be simple and relatively inexpensive to produce and take up a minimum of space in narrow and limited conditions on the commercial premises. Furthermore, it is also very important that the cooking apparatus be environmentally compatible, which means that the cooking apparatus must be able to function without the serving staff or the customers feeling any unpleasant effects of heat, smoke and odors.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
One new and characteristic way of obtaining this effect and solving the problems in the prior art is to use the air connection passage as a heat convector.
The cooking apparatus according to the present invention is suitable for cooking prefried low fat potato pieces with fatty contents of for example approximately 6%. The potato pieces also contain water which partly has to be removed in order to obtain the crisp and crunch consistency of the potato pieces which is characteristic of french fried potatoes. This means that a successive renewal of the air in the cooking chamber has to take place or else the cooking process will be halted when the air in the cooking chamber becomes saturated with steam.
The air renewal takes place when the ventilator draws air out of the cooking chamber and fresh air is introduced via an opening for the influx of air in the wall of the chamber. In this way an air current is produced so that the air content in the cooking chamber is constantly exhausted and r
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