A DAILY SPECTACULAR COOKING FEAT

A daily spectacular cooking feat

HUBLI:

Tucked behind the ISCKON temple, amidst thepicturesque green hills of Raypur, lies Akshaya Patra Kitchen,arguably the largest kitchen in India and perhaps, the world.

While the record books have largely remained silent about it, it isindeed a spectacular feat of modern science, with nearly 13 tonnes ofrice, 5 tonnes of raw vegetables and 4 tonnes of dal cooked daily to provide meals for 1.8 lakh children in 763 schools covering Hubli,Dharwad and Kundgol taluks of the district.

It resembles a factory with a three storeyed building spread across an area of 2.5 acres, having steam boilers, steel cauldrons, exhaust systems, conveyor systems and high speed cutting machines along withworkers in uniform with gloves and caps.

The kitchen has been built as per the ISO 22000 standards which is aninternational food safety management standard.

The rice procured from the Food Corporation of India, is first passed through the Rice Cleaning Unit (RCU) to remove iron particles using magnets, and then through a series of sieves to filter the rice, andfinally through a de-stoner to remove tiny rocks.

On a typical day , The RCU, which is also used to clean tur dal,can empty110 bags of rice per hour, each weighing 50 kgs. After the cleaningoperations, the grains are then stored in two large silos-specially designed containers imported from Spain to protect thegrains from pests.

They can store about 150 tonnes of rice. Cooking operation works in a top down fashion, with the washing and cutting taking place on the second floor, cooking on the first floorand the packing on the ground floor.

On the second floor, rice from the silos is washed by workers, in batches of 30 kgms. On the same floor,vegetables stored in the cold room are chopped and grated using highspeed cutting machines.

The first floor consists of 10 vessels to cook rice using steam generated from boilers and another 8 vessels to cook sambar. Around1.25 tonnes of rice can be cooked in 15 minutes and 1200 litres ofsambar in 45 minutes.

The cooked rice and sambar is then passed to the ground floor viachutes where they are stored in stainless steel containers speciallydesigned to retain heat upto a maximum of six hours.

The introduction of mid-day meal scheme has made an impact in the region in terms of school-enrollment ratios.

A study conducted by A C Nielsen shows that average enrolment in class V has increased by 31 per cent after the programme was initiated.