What does a classic stainless steel kitchen include? How many types of professional steel kitchens are there? How is the concept of kitchen with oven evolving? Learn details about the features and potential of what is still considered key equipment in fine dining.
Stainless Steel Kitchens: The 'Focus' of Every Cooking Zone
A stainless steel kitchen is the beating heart of every cooking zone, the physical space and home to the key equipment that makes it possible to cook each dish.
Before we explore its components, it's worth mentioning that professional stainless steel kitchens, by virtue of the material with which they are made, guarantee maximum food safety because they meet the requirements of the relevant EU legislation; they are highly hygienic because stainless steel is antibacterial, and does not absorb liquids, flavours or odours; it is very resistant to bumps, scratches and corrosion, and ensures long life because it does not deteriorate over time.
Components of Traditional Stainless Steel Kitchens: Hob and Oven
The classic professional steel kitchen is a cooking system consisting of two basic components: the hob and the oven.
The HOB can have gas burners or electric griddles.
Gas burners offer rapid temperature regulation, greater sensitivity in temperature management and uniform heat distribution.
Electric griddles can be round, square, or a single griddle, and provide easy temperature control and greater energy efficiency.
The OVEN can be static, ventilated, either gas or electric, or multifunctional.
Static ovens let the heat perfectly cook the food inside, thus ensuring ideal dryness and thorough cooking.
Ventilated ovens make it possible to cook different types of food at the same time, as the circulating air prevents odours and flavours from mixing in the cooking chamber.
Multifunctional ovens offer maximum versatility by combining static and ventilated options for perfectly cooking any dish.
The ovens can be various sizes: regular ovens generally have 2/1 gastronorm dimensions, although there are also professional models, such as those from Lotus Cucine, that have a larger size because they can hold two 1/1 GN gastronorm trays. Then there are maxi ovens, or 3/1 GN, meaning 3 1/1 gastronorm size. The one proposed by Lotus is the largest static oven on the market: it can hold 3 1/1 gastronorm trays and is 107 cm wide. It is actually larger than 3 1/1 gastronorm containers because it creates enough space around them to ensure excellent natural circulation of hot air for better cooking uniformity.
With the advent of vertical combined ovens, stainless steel kitchens with static ovens have fallen somewhat into disuse, even if they are indeed the only ones that allow best carrying out certain types of slow cooking, such as porchetta, lamb, etc. Moreover, they have another important advantage: static ovens can be used during service to keep dishes such as lasagna, potatoes and various types of foods warm.
Professional Mixed Steel Kitchens: The Versatile Solution for Every Need
Professional stainless steel kitchens can come in various forms according to the different combination of various types of hobs and ovens:
all gas with gas burners and static oven;
all electric with griddles and static or ventilated electric oven;
mixed with combinations of electric and gas, static and ventilated.
As one of the most innovative solutions for meeting the diverse culinary needs of modern and technologically advanced catering, mixed kitchens allow chefs to take advantage of the opportunity to have both a gas and electric cooking system, in static and ventilated modes, depending on the needs of the moment. This opportunity provides the ideal balance of performance, efficiency, flexibility and cost of use, making it an optimal choice for restaurants, hotels and facilities that need high productivity and speed, flexibility and savings, without ever compromising cooking quality.
Mixed kitchens offer great potential for development, and leading manufacturers are now testing and offering them to the market. This includes Lotus Cucine, which will offer a preview of a new mixed kitchen at Host Milano 2025: it has a multifunctional electric oven in the depths 700, 900 that allow great versatility, excellent performance and save valuable space in any room.
Would you like to learn more about stainless steel kitchens and Lotus's new professional stainless steel kitchen offerings? Write to lotus@lotuscookers.it or fill out the contact form.