Rational

Rational Ovens and Tilt Skillets: What You Need to Know

Rational combination ovens fuse convection and steam heat into one compact unit for an oven that cooks food quickly while preserving moisture. Designed with staff shortages and rapidly changing food trends in mind, iCombi® ovens can bake, roast, grill, deep fry, and poach foods, and even clean themselves when finished. Rational's tilt skillet, known as the iVario® Pro, also aims to replace numerous bulky appliances, such as stoves, fryers, and pressure cookers. By combining ceramic heating elements, a scratch-resistant base, and innovative technology, the iVario Pro can braise, steam, grill, and boil in a single footprint.

Common Questions About Rational Combi Ovens

What does a Rational combi oven do?

Like other combi ovens, Rational ovens can be used to cook with both steam and convection heat. What the Rational iCombi Pro offers that other ovens don't is precise control over the exact cooking method used. Rational's iCookingSuite and iProductionManager technology help ensure your food is cooked to perfection, even if the recipe requires multiple cooking steps. Using Rational technology, you can steam protein to maximize the moisture and then finish it with a blast of convection cooking to get a crisped exterior. When speed is a priority, many chefs prefer combi ovens over microwaves because a combi oven employs methods that don't change the texture of the final product the way microwaves can.

Rational equipment also has a self-cleaning system that removes lime scaling deposited by the minerals in your water. This saves you labor and time otherwise spent cleaning the machine by hand. It also prevents lasting damage that can occur when regular cleanings are forgotten.

How do you use a Rational oven?

iCombi ovens and iVario Pro tilt skillets are some of the smartest equipment in the industry. Rational combi ovens have digital displays with touchscreen or push-button controls, intuitive commands, and icons that can be understood with minimal practice, which helps busy commercial kitchens keep pace with their customers without needing highly trained staff on every shift. Rational appliances can be programmed to remember recipes and change settings automatically, producing consistent, optimized results. Once recipes are perfected, they can be synced across all Rational appliances within your network due to their advanced Wi-Fi capabilities, ideal for operations with multiple locations. On top of providing chefs with streamlined, consistent performance, eco-conscious and frugal operators can rest assured knowing these innovative systems are also designed to decrease energy usage and food waste.

What size Rational oven should I choose?

Rational combis are either half size or full size. Full-size options are standalone units that must sit on the floor, while half-size units can be placed on a countertop. Each unit has a capacity of food pans that it can hold, which helps you map out how much combi space you need to keep up with your needs. If you only have countertop space available for a new combi oven, then you'll need to opt for a half size, but if you have floor space available, a full-size unit can produce a greater volume of food. Consult the product specifications page for each individual oven to see its exact dimensions, as well as how many food pans it can hold at a time.