In the food service industry, it has long been desirable to delay mixing certain food ingredients together until just prior to consumption. The service of fresh green salad is one such example. Dressing added to the salad just prior to its consumption advantageously preserves the freshness, crispness, and distinctive taste of the greens, croutons, and other rough ingredients that are susceptible to dressing absorption. All too frequently, dressing is applied to roughage too early resulting in a drenched, wilted, and limp concoction that is rejected by consumers as inferior. When ordering a Caesar salad, for instance, it is traditional for the salad dressing to be prepared tableside and then rapidly tossed with the other ingredients such as romaine lettuce and croutons for immediate transfer onto a diner's plate for enjoyment. Tableside preparation, however, is costly and time consuming and not particularly well suited to the fast-food or high volume food service industries.
Consumers, restaurateurs, the fast-food industry, and institutional food preparation services continue to demand food products that are high quality, convenient, quick to prepare, and economical to produce. Fast-food outlets, for example, frequently offer pre-prepared salad roughage such as greens, croutons, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, meat and/or cheese combined together in a disposable individual container. The salad dressing, however, is frequently offered in a separate packet that requires cumbersome handling and opening before the contents therein are squeezed out onto the roughage. Typically, the roughage container also includes a lid that must be removed before the packet contents are added thereover. Once the container lid is removed, the dressing packet is torn open and the dressing therein is squeezed out and onto the roughage. Implements such as a fork, spoon or knife, individually or in combination, are then used to distribute the dressing throughout the roughage. The action required of the implements to distribute the dressing often results in substantial amounts of ingredients and dressing disadvantageously overflowing and tumbling out of the container onto the table, the clothes of the consumer, and, not infrequently, onto the floor.
Schools and other high volume institutions provide similar individual holding containers for salad roughage. The salad dressing, however, is frequently offered in a separate portion cup to be added atop the salad greens. Similarly, to thoroughly distribute the dressing among the roughage requires use of implements resulting in spillage and mess. Moreover, both dressing packets and portion cups are costly and inconvenient and require significant dexterous manipulation to use.
Large commercial eateries often separately store salad roughage in large plastic bins and dressing in other containers until it is desirable for both to be combined and mixed together just prior to serving. Once the desired dressing and roughage containers are located and opened, the dressing is poured onto the roughage. Alternatively, and depending on the size of the dressing container, the roughage may be introduced to the dressing. In either case, use of implements to toss the salad and distribute the dressing soon follows with its attendant and disadvantageous spillage, waste and mess. From the salad remaining in the mixing container, individual portions are then distributed onto individual plates and served.
There thus exists a long felt need for an improved salad container that eliminates the need to store, in separate containers, large ingredients such as salad roughage apart from smaller or liquid ingredients, such as salad dressing, until mixing them together is desired. It has been further long desired that a container be provided to eliminate the need to use mixing or tossing implements and the undesirable spillage, waste and mess resulting from use thereof.