Locating Combi Ovens in Mexico

[chefpelon]

howdy folks from mexico

im looking at purchasing a combi oven here in guadalajara and would like to hear from combi oven users regarding a few tips and recipes

the oven im looking at is made by a mexican outfit called san-son

they do have a good reputation

im extremly interested in any help whatsoever

kind regards

bruce byng

chef and owner of teatro limon puerto vallarta

[kalypso]

howdy folks from mexico

im looking at purchasing a combi oven here in guadalajara and would like to hear from combi oven users regarding a few tips and recipes

the oven im looking at is made by a mexican outfit called san-son

they do have a good reputation

im extremly interested in any help whatsoever

kind regards

bruce byng

chef and owner of teatro limon  puerto vallarta

←

Chef, I'm not in Mexico but I do have an Alto-Shaam double combi at work. The thing is ENORMOUS, about the size of an SUV and my employees find it somewhat intimidating.

BUT...we can cook almost anything in it. Perfect lobster? It does that. Roast a chicken in half the time? Does that too. Bake cookies, it does that but our oven cooks s little unevenly so one side of a sheet pan of cookies always seems to come out a little underdone if we don't rotate.

Installation was the hardest part of the process for us. We had to have a couple of service calls to adjust some of the internal settings, but once that was done we've had no further problems. If you get one make sure you have the company provide as much training for as many employees as you can get. Because the unit is larger than almost all of my employees (heck it's even way bigger than me) many who needed to use it were hesitant. The training chef from Alto-Shaam in L.A. came down a couple of times and worked with them which lessened their fear of the equipment.

With the Alto-Shaam combi we got 2 manuals, one was all the technical and maintenance stuff, the other was a manual with cooking instructions for everything from hot cereal and eggs to roast turkey and fish and a few recipes . The combi will cut the cooking time for most items. We found the suggestions for cooking specific items more helpful than the actual recipes in the manual. You should be able to easily adapt any of your current recipes to combi cooking, with the possible exception of some baked goods. We discovered that cooking times and temperatures in our combi were similar to those in our convection ovens. So now if we're cooking something new in the combi we consider at how we would have cooked in a convection oven and adapt from there.

The learning curve on the combis is a little steep, but it's a very short curve. Once cooks and chefs get the hang of using it - which doesn't really take long - they all want to use it because it's fast, easy and yields a nice product.

Edited July 10, 2008 by kalypso (log)

[nickarte]

There is an area here (in el DF) where they sell restaurant equipment, and a couple of high end fancy kitchen stores I could lead you to, but honestly, I have no idea what a "combi oven" is....