How the CVap Oven Changed the Foodservice Game

While most foodservice equipment is designed to transform food by cooking it, warming it, or cooling it, the Winston CVap oven was developed to keep food from changing in any way from its perfect "just cooked" state. Winston Shelton, the founder of Winston Industries, devoted his working life to engineering and refining equipment to keep food in that state. Even into his nineties, Shelton was helping design equipment with the goal of giving operators flexibility concerning when they can prepare and serve food.

Traditional food-holding equipment is notorious for drying food out, altering its taste and texture in ways that render perfectly prepared food inedible. Since food is mostly water (lean beef is 75 percent water,¹ while some foods, such as fruits and vegetables, owe over 90 percent of their mass to water), maintaining the natural moisture in food is vital. While food is cooking, some degree of evaporation is usually desirable because it's essential to browning, caramelization, and other processes that create the flavors we love in our food. But when operators need to hold food until it's served, evaporation is the enemy.

It's with that knowledge that Shelton began developing his oven. He knew that for centuries, cooks had developed methods of preserving the moisture content of food to produce a more succulent, appetizing end product. Methods as broad as casserole cooking, sous vide, and even wrapping foods in leaves before roasting them in the embers of an open fire have been utilized to this purpose. Shelton's challenge was to build a piece of equipment that could consistently replicate those results on a commercial scale. Now you can find Shelton's CVap heating and holding equipment in school cafeterias, fast food restaurants, and everywhere else that food needs to be held.

The science behind the equipment is fairly simple, based on the knowledge that moisture begins to evaporate when the air surrounding it is warmer than the water itself. The key is to create an environment where the moisture in the air is at equilibrium with the moisture content of the food so that water isn't lost or absorbed as food is held. That balance enables food to be held for hours in that golden "just cooked" state until it's served.

Modern Winston CVap cook-and-hold ovens take that control even further by giving operators the ability to precisely control the moisture in the air as well as the temperature of the air itself. That means food can be cooked, or even browned, and then held using the same piece of equipment. Controlling moisture not only results in a more tasty and visually appealing product but produces more yield per pound versus traditional methods that dry the product out and shrink it.

4 Time-saving CVap Methods That Can Revolutionize Your Kitchen

1. Staging: Operators that make high volumes of one particular item – burgers for example – can take advantage of CVap staging.² Rather than cooking each burger individually to order, this method enables cooks to heat big batches ahead of time, keeping them hot but still rare and juicy. As burgers are ordered, cooks finish them one by one on the broiler or the griddle, getting them done and ready to serve in a fraction of the time it would take to heat them from cold. The same process can be applied to everything from steaks to chicken.
2. Sous Vide: Literally "under vacuum," sous vide is a technique where foods are vacuum-sealed in a bag and traditionally cooked in a water bath that's held at the precise temperature cooks need to achieve their desired results. These ovens give you the same results using a method that's much easier to scale, so heating two dozen steaks to a perfect 135 degrees Fahrenheit is precise and repeatable batch after batch.
3. Fermentation: Fermentation is a cooking technique that produces everything from kimchi to charcuterie. It's a process that generally takes days or weeks and involves a number of difficult-to-control variables, but fermentation can be accelerated and made easier in a CVap oven. Chefs across the country are developing fermentation techniques using these ovens.
4. Eggs for Everything: Part of what makes the egg so incredible is its versatility. A mere 30 degrees Fahrenheit makes the difference between a raw egg and a hard-boiled egg, and that's why it can be so difficult to achieve the perfectly poached texture that a cook has in mind for their recipe. This equipment makes that precision control easy, enabling cooks to dial in the precise temperature they want and cook their eggs not a degree higher. This equipment also negates some of the fussiness of custards and cheesecake, and the moisture means no cumbersome water baths to contend with.

References

1. Water in Meat and Poultry. USDA. Accessed September 2021.
2. CVap Staged Burgers. Winston Industries. Accessed September 2021.