How A Japanese Megakitchen Prepares Thousands Of School Lunches Everyday | Big Batches

Narrator: This megakitchen in Japan carefully prepares 3,000 school meals every day. Since 1967, the Musashino City School Lunch & Dietary Education Promotion Foundation has been cooking these meals to promote healthy eating habits among young children. Narrator: We visited its kitchen, Sakura Zutsumi Cookhouse, to see how these lunches are made in such big batches. The day's preparation starts around 7:30 each morning. Staff members change into sanitized factory shoes and color-coded uniforms and wash their hands twice before entering the kitchen. This is Takagi. He is the nutritionist in charge of the menu, and he's our tour guide for the day. Narrator: The kitchen is spread across three floors and spans three-quarters the area of an American football field. Inside, 70 staff members break into small units, working in unison to prep, cook, and package all of these meals in just under four hours. Narrator: Today's meal consists of millet rice, miso soup, sticky shumai dumplings, cabbage and mustard sauté, and milk. Takagi plans each meal three months in advance, so the team has enough time to source all of the ingredients and account for students' allergies. Every menu item he adds is tailored to fit the nutritional needs of different age groups, so every student gets the most nutritious meal they can possibly have. Narrator: This massive pot is large enough to cook 750 kilograms of soup at a time. The base of the broth is made by boiling thick slices of dried bonito and Rausu kelp in water. Narrator: Most of the staff who work here are mothers of students. And many of them take great pride in knowing that the food is made with care and nutritional and healthy ingredients. Narrator: One of the most popular items the kitchen makes is shumai. Here, 15 staff members use 180 kilograms of ground pork, 40 kilograms of soybeans, and a variety of blended vegetables to make around 200 shumai by hand. And by the end of the shift, they'll make about 3,000 shumai. Narrator: On top of monitoring allergies, the kitchen is diligent about food safety. Some of the meat used to fill the shumai is always saved and monitored for bacterial growth. Narrator: Besides safety, the kitchen prioritizes using fresh, organic, and local ingredients. Narrator: To make the rice, the kitchen uses six giant pots. Narrator: In total, 250 kilograms of rice will be made in a very short period of time using a special process. Narrator: And finally, this is the main cooking area, where the cabbage and mustard sauté is made. 140 kilograms of the washed cabbage is boiled before getting sautéed with komatsuna leaf and carrots. Narrator: Once all of the food is cooked, meals are portioned into thermal containers and loaded into five delivery trucks. Narrator: All of the ingredients used are funded by the students' families, who pay school-lunch fees. Each meal costs about 340 yen, or roughly $2.50, for middle-school students, and about 240 to 280 yen for elementary students.

Channel: Insider Food

Views: 1,820,116

Keywords: INSIDER, FOOD INSIDER, Big Batches, Japan, Japanese Food, Japanese School, Japanese Cuisine, Mega Kitchen, Mega-Kitchen, Kitchen, School lunches, Lunch, Japanese School System, Japanese School Lunches, Miso Soup, Vegetables, Eggs, Soup, Broth, Families, School Children, Chicken, Japanese Agriculture, Japanese Food Standards, Kitchen Procedures, Food Production, Food Mass Production, Kitchen to Table, School Lunches, School Lunch Production, What It Takes, Big Batch, Insider Food

Id: ITzRFAfJsLA

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2023