Prepared foods, such as those appearing in supermarkets, take-out establishments, and the like, while appearing to be home cooked, may be typically expensive. Additionally, like fast food, these prepared foods lack nutritional value, and may be usually high in calories, salt, and fat. Accordingly, both fast food and prepared foods do not appeal to health conscious consumers.
To address some of the problems of intermixed frozen meals, a food container for use in a microwave with an internal separator dividing the container into upper and lower compartments were developed. The upper compartment may be configured for a food product and the lower for a water or water-containing medium. The separator may be a thin perforated sheet that may be designed to snap into place with evenly spaced internal lugs. When the food container may be placed in the microwave and heated the steam created by the water medium passes through the separator to steam the product. The problem with this food container may be that the separator may be configured to latch into place for use with the container, thereby inhibiting the availability of the water-containing medium after the food product may be steamed.
Therefore a need still exists for an ovenable cooking apparatus that facilitates improved cooking of a food product in microwave ovens, conventional ovens, combination ovens and all other typical cooking apparatuses which separates the food product from the sauce or liquid and allows the consumer to easily access the food product and sauce after cooking.
There exists a similar need for improvements in the food service industry. The food service industry currently prepares food in commercial settings using foodservice tray pans that include a mixture of food ingredients. Typically, the food comprises a frozen mass of ingredients such as starch, protein, vegetables, and sauce. To prepare and serve the food, the frozen foodservice tray may be heated in an oven, commercial oven, convection oven, combination oven, microwave oven, steam cooker, or the like. Because the food ingredients may be frozen in a large mass, the heating times can be from one to two hours or more. The quality of the food using this method may sometimes be undesirable, resulting in overcooked or undercooked ingredients, variation in food texture, or discoloration of the food ingredients. Further, consumers cannot plate their meals according to their individual tastes because all the ingredients may be mixed together. The current method may be also incompatible with breaded ingredients because they come out soggy and do not meet consumer approval.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a method and apparatus for preparing food in the commercial food sector that may be more efficient and produces higher quality food products.