The content of co-pending patent application Ser. No. 13/326,667 filed on Dec. 15, 2011, and which is entitled, “Apparatus for Preserving Cooked Food Palatability,” is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The content of co-pending patent application Ser. No. 13/326,607 filed on Dec. 15, 2011, and which is entitled, “Method of Extending the Time During Which Pre-Cooked Foods Are Kept Palatable” is also incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Many fast-food restaurants prepare food items before they are actually ordered and keep them warm until they are ordered by a customer. A pre-cooked, i.e. a pre-prepared, food product can thus be sold and served to the customer in significantly less time than it takes to prepare each food item after it is ordered.
A problem with pre-cooked foods is that they lose their taste or palatability over time. While taste or palatability is subjective, empirical data shows that most people will dislike the taste of a hamburger after it has been “held” or kept in a warming tray for more than about 15 minutes. Fast-food restaurant operators therefore keep pre-cooked foods warm and ready to serve for only a relatively short period of time, typically fifteen to twenty minutes. When that time has elapsed, the pre-cooked food product is disposed of. Extending the holding time of a pre-cooked food product is therefore contrary to the common and accepted practice of fast-food restaurant operators. Nevertheless, a method and apparatus for extending or preserving the palatability of a cooed food product would be an improvement over the prior art.
As used herein, the term “encapsulated environment” refers to a device having an enclosed volume sufficient to enclose at least a single portion or single serving of a cooked protein-containing food product that a restaurant or food service would serve as a distinct menu item or as a constituent of a distinct menu item, and including a headspace of a sufficient size and volume to enable the retention of compositions including gases, released from a cooked protein-containing food product over time. Stated another way, an encapsulated environment holds one and only one, single portion/single serving of a cooked protein-containing food product that a restaurant or food service would serve as a distinct menu item or as a constituent of a distinct menu item, and including a headspace of a sufficient size and volume to enable the retention of compositions including gases, released from a single serving of a cooked protein-containing food product over time.
As used herein, the term, “protein-containing food product” means the proteins that are included very lean proteins, lean proteins and medium-fat proteins, as defined by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The NHLBI is part of the National Institutes of Health or NIH. NIH is of course part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (U.S. Dept. of H.H.S). Definitions fir very lean proteins, lean proteins and medium-fat proteins are also available on line at the URL; http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/lose_wt/fd_exch.htm. Protein-containing food products include foods from animals such as beef, lamb and pork and their by-products as well as poultry and fish. The term, “protein-containing food products” excludes starches, fats, fruits, vegetables and fat-free and very low-fat milk foods as defined by the NHLBI. A “serving size” is considered herein to be measured by weight and is between about four ounces and up to about twelve ounces.
As used herein, the term, “patty” refers to a relatively small, flat cake made of chopped, ground, pressed or otherwise processed food. At least thirty percent of a patty's weight should be from proteins. The proteins can be very lean, lean or medium fat proteins, as they are defined by the NHLBI, or a mixture or combination thereof. A “patty” can thus be a mixture of ground beef, pork, chicken, turkey or fish, with or without fillers. A patty can be generally round or substantially disc-shaped but it can also be substantially rectangular or substantially triangular.
A single hamburger is an example of a menu item offered at many fast food restaurants. As shown in
For even single hamburgers made of only a patty and a bun, the patty 102 itself is actually a component of the sandwich. As used herein, the patty 102 of a single hamburger, is considered to be a single serving of a cooked, protein-containing food product, of a menu item, the menu item being a single hamburger, regardless of the condiments and trimmings that might or might not accompany the patty 102.
Both patties 102 of a double hamburger 200 are considered herein to be a component or components of menu item, namely a double hamburger 200. The patties 102 of a double hamburger, at least part of which are from animal proteins, are also considered herein to be a single serving of cooked, protein-containing food product of a menu item.
The one or more pieces of cooked chicken that make up a chicken sandwich are actually components of a chicken sandwich. As used herein, however, the one or more pieces of cooked chicken that make up a chicken sandwich are considered to be a single serving of a cooked, protein-containing food product of a menu, the menu item being the chicken sandwich.
The terms, “portion” and “serving” are used interchangeably.
As used herein, the term, “similar” means differing in size or position but not substantially different in shape. Two shapes are similar if one is larger than the other but they are otherwise the same or substantially the same.
The term “shape” refers to the form and/or configuration of a food product. A hamburger patty for example has a shape that is similar to a disc. A strip of bacon has a shape similar to a rectangle.
Shape also refers to the form and/or configuration of an encapsulated environment for a food product. The shape of an encapsulated environment and the volume it encloses relative to the shape of a cooked food product is preferably similar to the shape of the food product so that any excess size of an encapsulated environment, i.e., the volume of the encapsulated environment in excess of the food product volume, can be minimized. For example, if the shape of a cooked food product is a disc and the cooked food product volume is considered to be 100%, the shape and volume of the encapsulated environment needed to enclose the food product is preferably also a disc and needs to be at least 100% of the cooked food product volume but the disc-shaped encapsulated environment can be up to as much as 1000% (10X) the volume of the cooked food product (ten-times its value) for reasons set forth below.
The term, “cooked” means food that has been prepared for eating by means of heat. “Cooked” includes prepared for eating as required by, or as recommended by one or more of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) and/or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). By way of example, the USDA on its web site (www.FSIS.USDA.GOV) recommends that ground meat be cooked to an internal temperature of 160° F. The terms, cooked and pre-cooked are used interchangeably. A temperature of at least one-hundred forty degrees CR) is generally considered to be a minimum holding temperature for a cooked food product. Temperatures greater than 212° F. will boil off water in a food product and accelerate degradation.
No known entity specifies or mandates how long a food product can be held at an elevated temperature and remain safe for consumption. A common and established practice of fast-food restaurants and food service institutions, however, is to discard cooked food products after they have been in a holding cabinet for more than fifteen to twenty minutes. Discarding food products is known to be costly nevertheless, extending the holding time of a cooked food product contradicts at least the common and established practice of the fast-food restaurant and food service industries generally.
The term “air tight” means that all or substantially all of the compositions, water, protein degradation products, volatile organic compounds, fats, including gases released from the cooked food product, will remain in an encapsulated environment for at least a non-zero length of time but not necessarily indefinitely.
A characteristic of a semi-airtight enclosure is that it has an interior pressure equal to the surrounding or ambient air pressure. Another characteristic is that there can be air or gas flow through a semi-airtight enclosure. As used herein, the term, “semi-airtight” means that the compositions, water, protein degradation products, fats, including gases released from the cooked food product, will be reduced within the encapsulated environment by some venting or escapement of air or gases from the cooked food product that is held within the encapsulated environment device. There is no pressure difference between the interior of the device and the exterior of the device.
The terms, “palatable” and “palatability” mean the property of being acceptable to the mouth or palate of individuals, especially the palate of an individual for whom a food product was prepared and cooked. Some individuals consider raw fish to be palatable while other individuals to be unpalatable. Palatable and palatability can thus include the perception and evaluation of acceptable food.
The term, “organoleptic” means, pertaining to the sensory properties of a particular food or chemical. Organoleptic quality includes the typical sensory properties of a food: its taste, appearance and color, aroma, size, firmness and sound when consumed.
Prior art food holding pans and the food holding cabinets they work with, such as the pans and food holding cabinets depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,886, U.S. Pat. No. 7,905,173 do not and cannot provide an encapsulated environment. Prior art pans and holding cabinets are too large, i.e., they are able to hold multiple portions of a cooked protein-containing food product. Another reason is that prior art pans and ovens do not limit air flow, i.e., the headspace in the prior art devices is not able to retain compositions that escape from cooked, protein-containing food products.
The tray 800 is configured to provide an encapsulated environment for at least one patty placed in a compartment, albeit when the compartments 802, 804 are covered or when the tray 800 is placed inside a mating sleeve, not shown in
The tray 800 has a top surface 806, a bottom surface 808, two opposing and parallel sides 810, 812, and two opposing and parallel ends 814, 816. The front end 814 is provided with a tab 811 that provides or acts as a tray handle. The tab or tray handle 811 can be seen to extend laterally and away from the front end 814 of the tray 800 such that when the tray 800 is inserted into a mating sleeve, the tab/handle 811 can be used to pull the tray out of the sleeve.
Each compartment 802, 804 in the tray 800 shown in
As
As stated above, a single patty 820 is an example of a single component of a menu item, such as a hamburger or double hamburger. For claim construction purposes, however, one or more patties that might be fit into a patty-shaped compartment can also be considered to be a single serving of a protein-containing food product menu item, an example of which includes at least a single hamburger.
The compartments 802, 804 are preferably sized to be just large enough to fit a round patty, the size of which (thickness and diameter) is a matter of choice. When the tray 800 is covered, such as by insertion into a mating sleeve, the compartments, with a patty inside them, are large enough to provide a headspace of a size and volume that assists or aids retention of compositions including gases, including liquids lost by evaporation, released from the patty in the compartment, over time, the loss of which degrades flavor.
The shapes of the compartments 802 and 804 are preferably predetermined. “Predetermined” means the shapes of the compartments are determined according to a known-in-advance size and shape of a food product to be kept in the compartment. Compartments for other foods having other shapes would be shaped similar to the shapes of the various other foods. Since the compartments 802, 804 shown in the figures are for patties 820, the compartments are essentially cylindrical or “disc” shaped voids.
A “serving” can be determined by weight or volume. However a serving is determined, the volume of an encapsulating environment compartment is preferably sized and/or shaped to be able to hold only one serving with a head space preferably minimized at about one hundred ten percent but up to about ten times the volume occupied by a single serving.
Referring now to
In
The bottom 813 of the tray 800 shown in
As shown in
Referring again to
The tray 800 for a patty is preferably but optionally provided with patty removal-enabling channels 828 formed into the top surface 806 and through the sidewall 822. The channels 828 are either notches or ramps that enable a patty 820 in a compartment 802, 804 to be grasped from the bottom and lifted out from the close-fitting compartment without damaging the patty 820 by prying it out of the compartment or without having to flip the tray 800 over.
The sleeve assembly 1600 as shown in
Each sub-sleeve 1602, 1604, 1606 is sized and shaped to receive or hold one tray 800 and thus provide an encapsulated environment to a cooked, protein-containing food product, such as a patty 820, when a food product is inside a compartment and the tray 800 is inserted into a sub-sleeve, at least far enough to have the compartment holding the food product covered or enclosed within a sub-sleeve 1602, 1604, 1606. The sub sleeves 1602, 1604, 1606 and tray 800 are thus considered to be mating.
The sub-sleeves 1602, 1604, 1606 have a shape that is substantially a parallelepiped. Each sub-sleeve has a planar and horizontal top panel 1609 having first and second planar opposing surfaces 1610, 1612. Each sleeve also has two substantially vertical, substantially parallel, substantially planar side walls 1613, 1615. Each sub-sleeve has a substantially planar bottom panel 1617, which is substantially parallel to the top panel 1609 of each sub-sleeve top 1609. The top 1609 and the bottom 1617 of each sub-sleeve is separated by a distance, which defines an inside height 1620 of the sleeve 1602, 1604, 1606. The inside height of the sub-sleeves need not be identical or even similar but can instead be varied in order to have an assembly of sub-sleeves that can provide encapsulated environments for single servings of different cooked, protein-containing foods.
The bottom sub-sleeve 1702 is sized to be large enough, i.e., to have an inside height 1708 and a width 1710, large enough to able to receive a tray for single servings of foods that are large, i.e., a menu item that is large, an example of which is a single serving of ribs, such as those shown in
Referring again to
When a food product, such as a patty 820 is placed into a compartment 802, 804, it is preferred that the food product 820 in the compartment 802, 804 not contact the inside surface 1612 of the top panel 1609. The height 1620 of the sub-sleeves needs to be selected to enable the sub-sleeve to receive a tray 800 having a compartment 802, 804 that is deep enough to receive the entire food product 820 without any portion of the food product extending over the top surface 806 of the tray. A compartment for ribs or multiple pieces of chicken will thus be deeper that a compartment for a patty or an egg, such as the ones shown in
The sidewall height 825 of the tray 800 thus effectively determines the maximum depth of a compartment and the height or thickness of a single serving of a food product that can be kept therein. The internal height 1620 of the sleeves 1602, 1604, 1606 thus effectively dictates the tray's sidewall height.
In preferred embodiments, the internal height of a sub-sleeve, examples of which include the sub-sleeves 1602, 1604 and 1606, in combination of the sidewall height of a tray are selected to provide a “zero clearance” between them. As used herein, a “zero clearance” exists when the difference between the sidewall height of a tray and the internal height of a sleeve is one-quarter of an inch or less. By way of example, if the tray sidewall height 825 is selected to be one-half inch (0.50 inch) so as to provide a compartment 802, 804 able to receive a patty 820 having a nominal thickness of about seven-sixteenths inch, (i.e., 0.43 inches), a “mating” sleeve should have an internal height 1620 of no more than three-quarters of an inch (i.e., between 0.75 inches and 0.5 inches) in order for them to have a zero clearance fit.
Those of ordinary skill in the art should of course recognize that the nominal internal height 1620 of a sub-sleeve 1602, 1604, 1606 needs to be slightly larger than the nominal sidewall height 825 of a tray 800 in order to allow the tray to be freely slid into and out of a sub-sleeve. It is preferred that a sleeve/sub-sleeve have a nominal internal height 1620 selected to be at least one-sixteenth of an inch larger, i.e., 0.0625 inches, than the sidewall height of a tray 800 to be placed therein.
A sleeve assembly, i.e., one or more sub-sleeves and mating trays, is sized and shaped to be able to be placed into a food holding cabinet and facilitates heat exchange between the food holding cabinet and food products held inside a compartment. One example of a compatible food holding cabinets is the Model 541-446 Food Holding Bin shown in
A food holding cabinet 1900 such as the Model 541-446 has heated shelves 1902, which are also sometimes referred to as heated compartments. The terms, “shelf” and “compartment” are thus used interchangeably. (See
The shelves 1902 have nominal inside height dimension 1906 selected to allow large, multi-serving food holding pans (not shown) to be placed therein. The height dimension 1906 also allows one or more stacked trays, such as the stacked trays shown in
When trays 800 are stacked inside a sleeve or sub-sleeve, it is important that the trays 800 be able to slide into and out of the sub-sleeves that comprise a sleeve assembly. It is thus important for a sleeve assembly to be held in inside a compartment 1902 of a food holding cabinet 1900.
A first type of sub-sleeve 1802, depicted in
Both types of sleeves 1802, 1804 are essentially hollow or empty parallelepipeds, with sidewalls 1613, 1615 provided with U-shaped slots 1806 that extend downwardly from the top panel 1609 of the sub-sleeve and located near the rectangular-shaped front opening 1808 and rectangular shaped rear opening 1810 of the sleeves 1802, 1804. The sidewalls 1613, 1615 of first type sleeves 1802 are also provided slot-engaging tabs 1812 that extend downwardly front the bottom 1617 of the sleeve. When two or more, first type of sleeves 1802 are placed on top of each other, as shown in
The second-type sleeve 1804, which is shown in
The second-type sleeve 1804 is provided with compartment-engaging clips 1814 and 1816 that extend downwardly from the bottom of the second type sleeve 1804 near the front opening 1808 and rear opening 1810. The clips keep the second-type sleeve 1804, and any first type sleeves 1802 attached to it, from sliding out of a shelf of a food holding cabinet,
A front clip 1814 on the bottom sleeve extends down and over the front edge 1907 of the shelf 1902. A rear dip 1816, best seen in
The trays depicted in
The top compartment 2002 holds a large sleeve 2006, which mates with a large tray 2008 having a single, large compartment 2009. The sleeve/tray/compartment combination is sized and shaped to provide an encapsulated environment to relatively large, single servings of a menu item, such as the ribs shown in
The top compartment 2002 also holds a set 2010 of stacked sub-sleeves 2012. Each sub-sleeve 2012 holds a mating tray 2014, i.e., a tray that is sized and shaped such that when it is placed inside one of the sub-sleeves 2012, the compartments 2016 in the tray are essentially covered, i.e., covered with a head space small enough to form an encapsulated environment for any food product that happens to be in the compartment 2016.
The bottom compartment 2004 holds a relatively wide sleeve 2018, i.e., wide enough to receive two trays 2020 and 2024 side-by-side. The left-side tray 2020 is sized and shaped to have two, side-by-side compartments 2022. The right-side tray 2022 is sized and shaped to have a bowl-shaped compartment 2026. When the trays 2020 and 2024 are placed into the sleeve 2018, the compartments form encapsulated environments for the single servings of cooked, protein-containing food products they hold.
The bottom compartment 2004 also holds two trays 2028 and 2030 stacked on top of each other. In such a configuration, a compartment in the lower tray 2028 forms an encapsulated environment by the placement of the upper tray 2030 on top of it.
Finally,
Finally,
A substantially rectangular base 2208 is formed to have a disc-shaped depression 2210. A mating rectangular cover 2212 is provided with a disc-shaped protrusion 2214, which aligns with the disc-shaped depression 2210. The disc-shaped depression 2210 and the disc-shaped protrusion provide a disc-shaped space 2212 formed by bring the base 2208 and cover 221 together and which acts as an encapsulated environment, as long as the base and cover are together.
Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that an encapsulated environment can take many forms, the salient aspect being that it provides a very limited head space for a single serving of a cooked, protein containing food product, a single serving being a menu item.
The foregoing description is for purposes of illustration. The true scope of the invention is set forth in the claims.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61753051 | Jan 2013 | US |