oven life

How to Schedule Maintenance to Ensure Longer Oven Life

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A commercial smokehouse or dehydrator is a big investment — one that requires regular and ongoing maintenance to ensure a long oven life.

Commercial oven manufacturers provide information on how and what should be routinely inspected and maintained, but in many facilities, those instructions are often buried in a user manual that gets stuck in a drawer somewhere or made inaccessible to maintenance personnel.

Regular preventative maintenance is necessary to keep your oven operating for a long period of time.

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load smokehouse trucks for best airflow

How to Load Smokehouse Trucks for the Best Airflow

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The way trucks are loaded into a smokehouse or dehydrator greatly affects the creation and strength of the breakpoint — and can have a negative impact on the consistency of the product.

Anytime you add an object, like a smokehouse truck, into the flow of air, you change the way that airstream moves. It will either break apart or diminish if it’s hitting a wall, or it will flow around the object into a new path.

Overload product onto a truck and you’ll create a wall that prevents air from moving across the product. Under load product or trucks in the oven, and air will flow to the place of least resistance.

This is why it’s critically important to know the best ways to load trucks into a smokehouse or dehydrator.

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heat source

How To Choose the Best Heat Source for Your Oven

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Choosing the proper heat source for your product when purchasing a commercial smokehouse or dehydrator can be a daunting task.

What are the differences between heat sources? Which works best for what you’re trying to achieve? What heat source is going to be easy to maintain and inexpensive to run? What is the price difference between each heat source? Do you have the proper utilities already in your facility, or will you need to have more brought in?

There are a lot of aspects to consider when choosing the best heat source for your product. So where do you start?

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airflow calculations

4 Oven Airflow Calculations You Need to Know

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Airflow is the most important feature of any industrial smokehouse or dehydrator.

It’s the airflow that is ultimately responsible for creating the breakpoint that in turn cooks product in the oven. The better the airflow, the stronger the breakpoint, and the more consistently product will cook — resulting in better yields, better coloring, and better texture.

The airflow is critically important to any cooking process, which means it’s critically important to be aware of any variations in airflow that may affect the creation of the breakpoint and result in inconsistent cooking.

But how do you do that? How do you know if the air is moving optimally in an oven? How can you determine if something is wrong with an oven and affecting the airflow?

The answer is simple.
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smokehouse breakpoint

5 Design Components You Need to Improve the Smokehouse Breakpoint

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The smokehouse breakpoint is the most important aspect of any industrial oven.

This one feature is directly responsible for cooking your product, coloring your product, and either increasing or decreasing your product yields, depending on the strength and velocity of the breakpoint.

A strong breakpoint — one that makes it all the way across the cart to heat all product on that level — should be the main focus when investing in a smokehouse, as it results in a more consistent product, as each piece of product is receiving the same amount of airflow.

But how do you know if a smokehouse will have a strong breakpoint?

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beef

How To Cook Beef for Better Looking Shreds

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The popularity of shredded beef is at an all time high and smart companies are finding ways to produce a more consistent, hand pulled look to their product.

The reason is obvious: consumers want to buy a shredded beef product that closely resembles what they could make at home. The more consistent the shreds, the more it looks like it was pulled apart with forks, the better.

Achieving that hand pulled look is difficult though. Shredding product by hand isn’t scale-able and often requires a large investment in labor, while some meat shredding machines can produce a clumpy product.

So how do you get that hand pulled look consumers want? Simple, you change how you cook your product.

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cook chicken

How To Cook Chicken for Better Looking Shreds

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The popularity of shredded chicken is at an all time high and smart companies are finding ways to produce a more consistent, hand pulled look to their product.

The reason is obvious: consumers want to buy a shredded chicken product that closely resembles what they could make at home. The more consistent the shreds, the more it looks like it was pulled apart with forks, the better.

Achieving that hand pulled look is difficult though. Shredding product by hand isn’t scale-able and often requires a large investment in labor, while some meat shredding machines can produce a clumpy product.

So how do you get that hand pulled look consumers want? Simple, you change how you cook your product.

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cook pork

How To Cook Pork for Better Looking Shreds

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The popularity of shredded pork is at an all time high and smart companies are finding ways to produce a more consistent, hand pulled look to their product.

The reason is obvious: consumers want to buy a shredded pork product that closely resembles what they could make at home. The more consistent the shreds, the more it looks like it was pulled apart with forks, the better.

Achieving that hand pulled look is difficult though. Shredding product by hand isn’t scale-able and often requires a large investment in labor, while some meat shredding machines can produce a clumpy product.

So how do you get that hand pulled look consumers want? Simple, you change how you cook your product.

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5 Important Benefits of American Made & Serviced Ovens

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There’s something to be said for buying an industrial oven that is manufactured and serviced in America.

Putting aside the fact that American made means you’re supporting the creation and maintaining of jobs here in America, there are a number of benefits that come with the Made in America stamp on your industrial oven.

Greater quality, better customer service, and the ease of customization are just a few highlights of purchasing an industrial oven from an American manufacturer. But that’s not all!

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smokehouse controller report

5 Reporting Features to Demand from Your Smokehouse Controller

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An industrial smokehouse is only as good as the smokehouse controller that comes with it.

Think about it: your industrial smokehouse can be the most advanced piece of technology on the market, it can allow you to direct the breakpoint anywhere in the oven, it can increase product consistency and yields, but if the controller is difficult to use — or so outdated to be nothing more than dials and gauges — it will cause you more headache than it’s worth.

The smokehouse controller is the brains of your industrial oven and, as such, should be robust enough to not only easily control every aspect of your smokehouse, but should also track and report the status of your smokehouse.

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