Keeping Cool on French TV with Froilabo’s ULT

Top Chef – Ice Dishes

When things heat up in the kitchen, it’s good to know that Froilabo’s ULT freezers can help keep your cool.

As huge fans of France’s popular Top Chef, we were thrilled to see one of our ULT freezers make a dazzling debut on national television.

Aired in March, we were glued to our seats as contestants battled out a series of culinary challenges to tease the taste buds and set temperatures rising as they cooked up a storm to claim top prize for the day.

Facing several challenges, Froilabo’s ULT was put to the test when guest chef, Andoni Aduriz, challenged contestants to prepare an icy dish.

Stills from the programme show our Froilabo Freezer as a feature in the Top Chef kitchen. A perfect tool for the creation of ice dishes. Can you spot it in the pictures?

In this episode we see the amazing work of contestants Arnaud Delvenne, Elis Bond, Logan Depuyt and Abroise Voreux, as they work in pairs to produce their icy dishes. We were glued to our screens as we watched how the chefs used our ultra-low freezers to assist in the creation of their fascinating dishes.

The contest begins with Arnaud Delvenne and Elis Bond working together to create an intriguing dish of frosted mackerel. Their dish contained grilled and frosted mackerel, iced nitrogen mackerel, crispy mackerel bone, chilli granite, and a guanciale sauce.

As visible in the stills, large blocks of ice were used to display the food and add an artistic twist to the already eccentric dishes. During the preparation of their dish, Arnaud shares with the audience that after grilling fish, if placed in the cold, in contact with ice, the flesh of the fish will firm, and the flavours will be preserved. Froilabo’s ULT will have been an extremely useful tool in the kitchen for the freezing of the ice blocks used in the show. With a temperature range of -45°C to -86°C, the ULT provided a space for rapid freezing of the large amounts of liquid needed for the blocks, something that the average freezer would struggle to produce.

The second pair of contestants, Logan Depuyt and Ambroise Voreux, worked collectively to make an interesting, and out of the ordinary dessert of chocolate and smoked herring. Consisting of chocolate ice cream, coffee, whiskey, fried nitrogen-smoked herring bone, grated frozen smoked herring, and a slab of chilli-chocolate, their dish was sure to get people’s attention.

Various aspects of each dish highlighted the applications a ULT can offer in the kitchen and demonstrated some show stopping tricks that the skilled contestants used the ULT for to create their dazzling dishes. From the large blocks of ice, ultimately being used for presentation, to the frozen ingredients, such as the frozen smoked herring, used by Logan and Ambroise, to grate onto the top of their dish.

An ultra-low temperature (ULT) freezer generally has a temperature range of -45°C to -86°C, which will allow for rapid freezing of fish and meat. The rapid freezing from a ULT maintains the quality of the fish and preserves its delicious taste. Our ULT will have retained the fish’s delicious taste that was then transferred onto the dish through the grating.

Froilabo’s ULT Freezer

Using Froilabo’s ULT Trust Freezer in the Food Industry

This recent episode of Top Chef has highlighted the benefits a Froilabo ULT can bring to the kitchen. Whether it’s for preservation of food, or a bit of fun creating high-end artistic meals.

Our freezers are manufactured subject to ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 standards, meeting food safety legislations and the high standards and quality criteria necessary to support all processes in the kitchen.

Freezing Fish

Chefs are increasingly using ULT freezers for the deep freezing of fish. Raw fish has a water content of around 70%; when frozen, these water molecules turn into crystals. In a traditional freezer reaching, -18°C, the crystallization process can take a long time and causes the crystals to form together and create larger crystals which can puncture the cells of the flesh and ultimately have a negative effect on the texture of the fish once defrosted.

With a ULT, the fish is frozen much faster, reducing the crystallisation process, and eliminating the risk of puncturing. Using a ULT, provides an improved taste of the fish upon defrosting and maintains the original texture.

Prolonged Storage

For the shipping and storage of fish, freezing is used to preserve the fish. ULT freezers can benefit restaurants as they can better manage their supply chains as fish, such as plaice and sole can be stored for around two years if frozen at -30C. This would allow chefs to stock up on fish when the supply is best and ensure they have a sufficient supply of fish all year round.

Find your Froilabo Freezer today

If you have enjoyed this article and would like to browse our products, why not have a look at our ULT Trust Freezer, featured in Top Chef France, or browse our full range of ULTs. Furthermore, if you would like to find out more about how Froilabo can help, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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