The 251 North will utilize the Urschel, equipment that specializes in cutting food.
This campus’s dining halls are making meals with fresh produce this semester, thanks to Dining Services’ investment in a human-sized food dicer in the spring.
The 4-by-4-by-5 dicer, an Urschel Diversacut 2110 stored in 251 North, debuted in the spring and used to be exclusively for sandwiches and salads. The dicer cuts 40,000 pounds of produce each month, enough to supply produce for Chef’s Feature dishes and salad bars in 251 North and both dining halls.
Dining Services previously purchased frozen produce for Chef’s Feature dishes, as well as vacuum-sealed, precut produce from vendors, Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple said. But that got to be expensive, he said.
“We had been trying to include fresh produce as much as we could, but it was way too labor intensive,” Hipple said. “For years, we’ve debated about cutting and preparing produce. This is the most cost-effective solution we’ve found.”
The chopper requires two employees to run the machine, which moved or eliminated seven jobs, Senior Executive Chef John Gray wrote in an email.
The North Campus Dining Hall serves 500 Chef’s Features a day, and the South Campus Dining Hall serves about 200. Instead of having employees cut the produce by hand, the dicer can cut 50 pounds of any vegetable in 30 seconds or less, Gray wrote.
“We have to buy produce now every day,” Hipple said. “Before, for example, we could get enough green beans for a month, but the nutritional value and flavor of fresh green beans is much better.”
Hipple said the price of frozen produce is not necessarily cheaper, but it is more stable. The dicer is saving Dining Services money by the amount of labor they save, he said.
“It cost $125,000 for the machine and all the accessories needed to do all the different cuts,” Gray wrote in an email. “We figured it would take about a full year of production to pay it back.”
And with fresh produce comes the opportunity to use a variety of ways to cook the vegetables, Hipple said.
Judith Hernandez, a chef and manager of the South Campus Dining Hall, said the only options are to boil or steam the vegetables because frozen produce holds more water.
“With fresh produce, you can do anything you want. You can steam it, saute it or roast it. It give us a lot more creativity in the kitchen,” Hernandez said. “Students are not going to see the same thing all the time. They’ll see more color and flavor as oppose to a plain, steamed vegetable.”
Freshman biology major Carianne Powers said she and her group of friends are health-conscious and prefer fresh produce to frozen.
“Steamed food is just less appetizing,” Powers said. “Fresh produce is crisp and tastes healthier. The kind of person who is health-conscious will notice it.”
Colby Dean, a sophomore agricultural and resource economics major, agreed that fresh produce tastes better but did not detect a change from frozen to fresh produce.
“More options is a good thing, and I am happy it’s fresh now,” he said, “but I didn’t really notice it was not [fresh] before.”
In addition to produce, Dining Services are looking for other ways to use the chopper. The device can also cut about 4,000 pounds of chicken each month.
“I think we’ll keep looking for more opportunities in other places where we can use it,” Hipple said.
