@PrincessShmoo I'm impressed that your photo of their Slow Roasted Chicken even looked roasted. (But is that a breast and a wing or a leg and a thigh? Looks small for chicken breast.)
I eat mostly chicken at home but have given up on even the chicken
DCL serves from their lighter offerings because most of the time I get beige chicken. I've marveled that they have been able to "Slow Roast" chicken and get the chicken cooked but the skin is still fatty. One time I reached my breaking point and asked the head server how my chicken could possibly be considered Slow Roasted; so he brought out the chef to explain how they "Slow Roast". It included a lot of boiling and he mentioned searing (which I had never heard of with a chicken) and then a couple minutes in a convection oven. When I asked how any of that translated to "Slow Roasted", he told me I was mistaken that the description was just Oven Roasted Chicken and since it did go into a convection oven it could be described as Oven Roasted Chicken.
To me it looks like the breast with the thigh, which is a classic cut of chicken you learn in chef school.
The way the chef describes the cooking method makes sense to me and basically proves my theory of a prep team and a service team.
The prep team would either cut the raw chicken pieces to size or open the bags of pre chopped chicken pieces. They would place the correct number of chicken pieces into big trays ready for the next stage.
The chicken would then be seared in huge pans. This means the raw chicken pieces are cooked quickly over high heat for a short time. This seals and browns the outside of the chicken piece and the skin but the inside is not cooked through. After searing they would be placed in trays and transferred to a broiler or steamer, to thoroughly cook through while retaining the brown outside. This also ensures that the meat remains moist and does not dry out.
For service, they would be transferred to the convection oven, to crisp and heat back up to the correct temperature.
High volume fine dining cooking methods are very different to fine dining cooking methods for a 1 service 40 seater fine dining restaurant and are very different to domestic cooking methods for a family.
Even though the cooking process involves cooking and then cooling and then cooking again, each stage of the process has very strict rules and regulations. The rules and regulations for food preparation are called
Hazard
Analysis and
Critical
Control
Points (HACCP) and it involves temperature checks of the food at each stage.
I used to work for an outside events fine dining catering company in London. This company would pre cook the core components of the meal, the meat, vegetables, sauces, etc at their offsite facility. They would load the meat, vegetables etc into huge trays and transport everything, including ovens to the event location. At the event location they would set up a temporary kitchen, and finish the cooking processes. Then for service, it was a production line, the waiting staff would line up with a plate in each hand on one side of a row of tables and the chefs would be on the other side. Each chef would have a component of the dish. One chef would put the chicken on the plate, the next chef would put the potato on the plate, the next chef would put the broccoli on the plate, the next chef would put the cauliflower on the plate. As each component was placed on the plate, the server would move to the next chef and so on , until the plate looked like the photo above. They the servers would go out to the dining room and serve the food.
It was the same procedures no matter the size or location of the event. Most of the events were between 400 to 700 people. Some of the locations I worked at were Tower Bridge, Science Museum and Royal Courts of Justice.
