Debbie Trujillo, student nutrition services director for Bernalillo Public Schools in New Mexico, cares deeply about providing healthful, delicious meals to every student at the district’s eight schools, every day.
“My mission as student nutrition director is making healthy, quality food for our students,” she says. “We serve approximately 2,800 breakfasts and approximately 2,900 lunches. We have eight or nine different offerings a day that we provide for lunch. My staff takes pride in making different kinds of pizza from scratch. We also do our traditional red chili with pork. We love to do Asian food. So we do offer a variety of different types of food options.”
All eight schools in the district are equipped with a kitchen, and in every kitchen is a RATIONAL iCombi and iVario. The district purchased its first RATIONAL combi ovens in 1998 using money awarded through a state Department of Education grant. It has since updated its original equipment with iCombi Pro units and added iVario units, replacing its old tilt skillets.
“Having the iCombis and the iVarios in all of our kitchens has allowed us to cook – for breakfast, lunch, after school snacks – in a faster, more effective, and efficient way versus cooking over the stovetops,” Trujillo says.
“I just really wanted to bring it into all my schools so that we could start with this scratch cooking, improve our quality, but also minimize time for my staff. And also take in the safety consideration as well,” she says.
“It’s one thing preparing meals, but we make them with heart, we make them with love. And using the iCombi and iVario to do that, it was just an enhanced product.”
Cecilia Serrano, head cook at Bernalillo High School, has prepared meals for students in the Bernalillo public school district for over 22 years. She and her kitchen team use the iCombi and iVario to prepare from-scratch specialties like red and green tacos, chile rojo, Mexican pozole, pizza, and a Frito pie made with crunchy corn chips layered with beef, cheese, tomatoes, and enchilada sauce.
They use RATIONAL grill plates and perforated baking trays to make perfectly crispy pizza quesadillas and chimichangas in the iCombi, and iVario accessories like scoops and baskets to facilitate the cooking and transfer of foods.
“We’re able to do so many functionalities at one time, so we can put two or three different meal options in an iCombi and not have to wait to make each one separately,” Trujillo says.
The ConnectedCooking app makes it easy for the kitchen teams to share and update recipes among the district’s eight schools, and to remotely monitor the status of cooking systems and internal cooking temperatures throughout the day and overnight.
Increased kitchen safety is an important benefit that comes with RATIONAL equipment. To Serrano and Trujillo, that means less margin for error and the ability to work and produce meals faster, in an improved kitchen setting. In the past, for example, they used buckets to transport water and food across the kitchen.
“The iVario, the water comes directly out of the unit,” Trujillo says. “You’re not having to put buckets of water into the unit. I don’t have the staff having to lift heavy pots of stew now, and it’s safer. So it gives them a better type of working environment.
“Cooking in the iCombi and the iVario in our district really has allowed us to enhance the quality of food that we offer to our students on a daily basis. It really provides us with the cooking technology that we need to be able to serve healthier, scratched meals to our kids,” Trujillo says.
“RATIONAL to me is the best cooking device that there is out there. When I look at quality, the way the food comes out, there’s no other comparison. RATIONAL is the way to go. Being able to have the iCombi and the iVario is a blessing to our district. We have quality food, healthier food, and happier kids.”
Industry:
Education
Core business:
Public School District
Location:
Bernalillo, New Mexico, USA
The challenge:
Deliver a variety of fresh, healthful, homemade food for breakfast and lunch across a school district
The solution: