FOOD QUALITY AND ITS CONTROL

Transcription

1 FOOD QUALITY AND ITS CONTROL Quality in production refers to the taste, texture, appearance, nutritional value, and level of excellence of the food served. Quality is defined as any of the features that make something what it is or the degree of excellence or superiority. The word "quality" is used in various ways as applied to food. Quality product to the salesman means one of high quality and usually at an expensive nature e.g. champagne is considered a quality as compared to fish and chips. Likewise for fresh produce, the word "quality" refers to the attributes of the food which make it agreeable to the person who eats it. This involves positive factors, as mentioned before, like colour, flavour, texture and nutritive value as well as the negative characteristic such as freedom from harmful micro-organisms and undesirable substances. Quality and consistency are just as important in a non-profit operation as they are in a commercial restaurant though the feedback supplied by the profit motive is absent. The quality of food in a hospital contributes directly to patient recovery. Good food in a school affects students health the typical school lunch is carefully designed for nutritional value, which is wasted if the students don't eat it. The food served day after day to captive clienteles, such, as employees in a company dining room or military personnel on base is tremendously important to morale, and management in such places is deeply concerned with morale. If the food is consistent but consistently bad, they've got a problem. The standards of quality are set by management, but their achievement is in the hands of the cook. The task is complicated by the very nature of quality. It is hard to keep personal opinion out of quality judgments. Quality control is the sum of all those controllable factors that ultimately influence positively or negatively the quality of the finished product e.g. selection of raw materials, processing methods, packaging, methods of storage distribution etc. It means assuring day-in-day-out consistency of quality in each product offered for service. The term control does not imply that a poor raw material can be converted into a good finished product. In food processing, the general rule is that the effective methods must be carefully applied to conserve the original qualities of the raw materials. Processing cannot improve the raw material. Many people in the industry consider product consistency the single most important factor in the continued success or failure of a commercial operation. A restaurant is known by its food. People come back to enjoy tastes and textures they remember with pleasure from their last visit, and they tell their friends. Good food and sales go hand in hand.

2 The aim of quality control is to achieve as good and as consistent a standard of quality in the product being produced as is compatible with the market for which the product is designed. The principles of quality control The principles of quality control are considered under the following: Raw material control Process control Finished product inspection Invariably, once a food product has been through a manufacturing process, little can be done to alter its quality. Thus examination of finished products only permits acceptance of material reaching the desired standard and rejection of material which fails to reach this standard. Such a process is therefore one of inspection and not one of control. It can be claimed that if control of raw materials and control of process is perfect, the final product will not require inspection. However, in practice it is seldom possible to guarantee complete control over raw materials and processing conditions and thus a greater or lesser degree of finished product inspection will be necessary, depending on circumstances within the factory. it is economically desirable to concentrate on ensuring that inspection (and rejection) at the finished product stage is reduced to a nominal level by effective raw material and process controls. In a food processing industry the stores and warehouses often contain a large range of raw materials. Raw materials such as artificial colouring, spices and essences may be used slowly and may deteriorate on long storage. Others such as wheat or milk powder may be rapidly replaced in the flour and milk industry respectively. Fresh meat is highly perishable and requires good refrigeration where sugar, salt etc. may be very stable and only requires a cool dry condition to remain in excellent condition for a long period. It's not every single raw material which must be subjected to detailed examination and testing at frequent intervals. Those used in insignificant amounts can be omitted from frequent inspection since the cost of inspection will often far outweigh the advantages gained. In any product, there is a dominant raw material (sometimes it could be several of these) upon which the quality of the finished product is mainly dependent e.g. in bread production, flour is the essential raw material, malt for beer, wheat for flour etc. To make the difficult task of quality control a little easier, here are some important guidelines. Be sure one understands the quality standards set by management for each product. There are various ways these standards may be communicated by recipes, by photographs of completed dishes, best of all by demonstration and taste.

3 Accept these quality standards as they are defined by management. In any well run operation they reflect the preferences of the clientele. Follow these standards to the letter. One can suggest changes, and action them if the supervisor approves. Follow good production techniques from pre - preparation to final product to ensure consistently high quality. Often the quality of the finished dish can be lowered by carelessness in the early stages of pre - preparation. Poor breeding technique, for example, can make an otherwise perfect dish look ragged and spoilt. Sample finished products even when they are made from standardized recipes, so that you can test the quality and make any necessary adjustments before the food is served. Receiving a complaint from the client is far more uncomfortable than detecting it yourself and making necessary rectifications. Countless other things contribute to quality and its control--proper setup for production, proper use of tools, good-quality, raw materials, proper cleaning good timing, almost everything one does. One has to think about quality all the time. Ultimately we understand that. Quality control is a dynamic concept which evolves from initial plan as experience grows. It scans every day's production. Day-to-day experience of the variables to he met leads sometimes to simplification of original plan. The introduction of improved machinery may also affect the original plan. Year-to-year experience of raw material variability increases the degree of certainty of predictions based on raw material testing. The bacteriological safety of a pack is a factor involving the growth of confidence as experience grows. In the industrialized world, all food processing is linked to quality control. They do operate systematic quality control scheme. There are lots of mechanized control techniques and these are linked with improvements in processing machinery. Thus, although quality control started with a chemist, it may well be developed by an engineer. From these considerations, it is tempting to speculate that in the 21st century, there will be a possibility of centralizing all forms of control and using modern data processing methods to obtain an integrated picture of events at any moment during the production schedule, and at the same time to provide continuous monitoring of the schedule to allow very rapid adjustments to fluctuating demand and changing circumstances. It is perhaps not too fantastic to suggest that the manager of the future may sit at a desk provided with dials showing him the sales current level, the current production level, the production efficiency level, the running profit margin and the running quality index. There seems no fundamental reason why such a system could not be devised to process continuous incoming information.

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5 FOOD QUANTITY AND ITS CONTROL The term quantity, in the context of production refers to the amount of a product to be produced for service in a given production period. Quantity control means producing the exact amount-no more, no less. Here also, the management sets the standard and-the cook has actual responsibility for control. Quantities are usually expressed in numbers of portions of a standard size. Each number represents a careful forecast based on known needs (such as banquet orders in a hotel or student population in a school) or on careful projections based on records of past sales. The care with which the figure is set reflects management's concern with quantity control. lf it is too low there won't be enough of the product for everyone who wants. If it is too high there will be too much, and overproduction can affect both quality and cost. The same things happen if the figures are correct but the cook does not meet them. For e.g, there may be a guest who -drove 50 miles for a cup of the soup and one has just run out of. There are several things you-can do as a cook to keep your own production on target: Be sure there is good communication between you and your supervisor on the number of portions to prepare. Be sure you understand the portion sizes needed. If ounce portions are called for and one prepares ounce portions, one will have enough for 25 portions left over. lf ounce are called for and you prepare enough to cater to ounce portions, you will be short 20 portions. Prepare food in logical quantities and numbers. For example, make soup in litres. Make round numbers of portions, such as 25O or 500, not 248 or 492. Round numbers are easy to calculate and measure and there is far less chance of making a mistake. Know raw products and their yields. This will save one of unpleasant surprises. Yield as served, or edible portion (EP). Compared with the raw product as purchased (AP) is sometimes as little as 40 to 50 percent. The difference represents bone, fat, shell, peelings, trimmings or shrinkage of during cooking, depending on the product. As always, use good cooking techniques and controls to avoid unservable products or short yields such as shrinkage of meats. Stagger-cook whenever necessary to avoid having products lose servable quality before they are used. lf they should become unusable, one will either run short or be forced to prepare extra amounts

6 All these practices are essential for good quantity control. Now let's look more closely at why quantity control is so important. Quantity control is directly related to profit. Overproduction affects cost. Underproduction affects sales. And profit is the difference between the two. Underproduction reduces sales. Not only are the current sales of the missing portions are lost but future sales may be lost as well. Disappointed customers often do not come back. Overproduction increases cost. It takes increased labour as well as an increase of raw materials to overproduce. One of the best ways of controlling cost is to produce only what is needed when it is needed. Whatever is overproduced is wasted or leftover. Leftovers relate quantity control directly to quality control. When one has leftovers in a fixed menu situation, it is difficult to use all the leftovers without compromising the quality. Warmed over leftovers don not normally maintain product consistency. Portion control is the proper breaking down of the total quantity of the food prepared into specific serving quantities, or portions. Portion control refers to the measurement of portions to guarantee that the quantity planned is the quantity actually served. This is a very important factor as the most accurate of the cost projections is only as valid as the strictness with which portion control is enforced in the kitchen.