NCL food prepared on Shore and microwaved??

[scootersdad]

Does anyone know what percentage of the main courses are prepared by restaurant supply houses and then shipped to be Microwaved.

 

If so, which Main Course meals are prepared on-ship?

 

I know soups, breads, and other smaller items are made on ship; so I don't need to know that.

[need2cruisesoon]

Does anyone know what percentage of the main courses are prepared by restaurant supply houses and then shipped to be Microwaved.

 

If so, which Main Course meals are prepared on-ship?

 

I know soups, breads, and other smaller items are made on ship; so I don't need to know that.

 

Microwaved...say it isn't so.

[Cruiser_1977]

I have always been told by staff and read that everything is prepared fresh.

[Laszlo]

Does anyone know what percentage of the main courses are prepared by restaurant supply houses and then shipped to be Microwaved.

 

If so, which Main Course meals are prepared on-ship?

 

I know soups, breads, and other smaller items are made on ship; so I don't need to know that.

 

I've taken two behind the scenes tours, we hit the main kitchen right before lunch. Everything I saw was prepared fresh. From what I could see it looked like half the vegetables were frozen the other half fresh.

[mef_57]

Does anyone know what percentage of the main courses are prepared by restaurant supply houses and then shipped to be Microwaved.

 

If so, which Main Course meals are prepared on-ship?

 

I know soups, breads, and other smaller items are made on ship; so I don't need to know that.

 

Special diet meals, perhaps?

 

And really, without inside knowledge, we would have no idea what specific meal isn't made on board.

[fabby50]

I know you can pre-request kosher meals and they bring them on board pre-prepared. We sat at a table next to a rabbi and family one cruise and everything was brought to the table in disposable containers and wrapped. The family also brought some of their own condiments on board. There may be other special request meals that are brought on board pre-prepared.

[PATRLR]

I know the food quality is low and thinking things are mass prepared like airline meals isn't unreasonable. But, if you think of the logistics of bringing in literally thousands of prepared meals it seems to me to be very doubtful that is happening.

 

I believe the root cause of the low quality food is simply using low quality ingredients.

[Kamloops50]

All food id prepared fresh. Only Kosher food is brought on board froszen and heated up.

[josephmz]

Having just toured the kitchen on Escape last week, I can categorically deny that this the case.

 

Otherwise, there would be several banks of microwaves instead of the huge array of cooking equipment where staff works 24 hours a day.

 

Everything is prepared on board. If not, they sure are wasting a lot of money by having all those huge walk-in refrigerators and freezers stocked with boxes of food.

 

Frankly, I found the food to be uniformly excellent, but I don't subscribe to "Epicurian" magazine

[grouchomarx]

I read a post on CC a while ago, several months at least, about this topic but I don't think it was in the NCL thread. Maybe Royal? Not sure. But a person claimed to have knowledge from ship staff that it was becoming more and more prevalent for the cruise ships to take on prepared meals that are heated on board, as opposed to absolutely everything being scratch made. It sounded credible and apparently was saving them money. Perhaps fewer kitchen staff would be needed if more foods were prepared on land? Who knows, but this is not the first I've heard of it, for those of you who think it sounds preposterous.

[chengkp75]

There may be one or two microwaves, total, onboard, certainly not enough to do dinner entrees. While the food is generally not as good as most land restaurants, those restaurants are also not producing thousands of meals every day, so you need to compare the cruise lines with catering services more than anything. The food, even the soups and sauces are all prepared from scratch onboard. I know, as I spent a few years maintaining the galley equipment on NCL ships.

[yankees111]

Does anyone know what percentage of the main courses are prepared by restaurant supply houses and then shipped to be Microwaved.

 

 

 

If so, which Main Course meals are prepared on-ship?

 

 

 

I know soups, breads, and other smaller items are made on ship; so I don't need to know that.

 

 

 

62.3% of the meals are microwaved on board. Unless of course you are cruising to Bermuda or Canada in which case it is only 58.3%, unless of course your cruise starts on a Wednesday, or if there is a full moon during your voyage!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[bruadhin]

I read a post on CC a while ago, several months at least, about this topic but I don't think it was in the NCL thread. Maybe Royal? Not sure. But a person claimed to have knowledge from ship staff that it was becoming more and more prevalent for the cruise ships to take on prepared meals that are heated on board, as opposed to absolutely everything being scratch made. It sounded credible and apparently was saving them money. Perhaps fewer kitchen staff would be needed if more foods were prepared on land? Who knows, but this is not the first I've heard of it, for those of you who think it sounds preposterous.

 

Staff on land gets paid American wages with American taxes and benefits, plus a profit for the caterer. It would be extremely difficult to get the cost lower.

 

People saying this just do not realize the economies of scale you get in a large kitchen. It is just like at home, unless you are completely willing to sacrifice quality, you can't buy prepared food for less than it costs to prepare. A large kitchen just takes this further. All those difficult sauces, etc. that need special ingredients and are kind of expensive to prepare at home aren't in a large kitchen because you will use an entire container, as in a 5 gallon container.

[vince_g]

If you think the food is slow to come out now, imagine if they had to microwave al those meals. Food reheated in microwaves just doesn't taste fresh, and I think most people would be able to tell.

[PATRLR]

There may be one or two microwaves, total, onboard,

What a ridiculous statement. I'm sure there is at least one microwave in every galley. Likely a few in the bigger main galleys. Probably a bunch in the crew quarters. But, yes, I agree, not enough to heat everyone's meals.

 

While the food is generally not as good as most land restaurants, those restaurants are also not producing thousands of meals every day, so you need to compare the cruise lines with catering services more than anything.

This is such a cop out rationalization of the poor quality food ships are serving. I know of at least a couple of banquet halls that regularly serve 1000 meals in one sitting, and the food served is as good as even the finest restaurants and better than most restaurants. Feeding a large number is no excuse for the low quality served on ships these days.

[chengkp75]

I read a post on CC a while ago, several months at least, about this topic but I don't think it was in the NCL thread. Maybe Royal? Not sure. But a person claimed to have knowledge from ship staff that it was becoming more and more prevalent for the cruise ships to take on prepared meals that are heated on board, as opposed to absolutely everything being scratch made. It sounded credible and apparently was saving them money. Perhaps fewer kitchen staff would be needed if more foods were prepared on land? Who knows, but this is not the first I've heard of it, for those of you who think it sounds preposterous.

 

I will say that this does sound preposterous. Are you talking about full prepared meals (aka the old "TV dinners"), or prepared main courses, etc? Because neither one would be efficient in a ship's galley. While they might save on galley staff, they would have to invest in an incredible amount of new food handling equipment to effectively heat all these little prepared dishes. And any potential savings on galley staff would be taken up with the cost of the prepared meals (they are always more expensive than doing it yourself, if you have the right scale of operations), and the packaging of these meals, etc. How do you handle all of this stuff, when cardboard in any fashion is prohibited in any food preparation area? Everything is taken out of boxes, even if they are taking a full case of cans, when the stores come out of the provisions storerooms, and taken on carts or in pans on carts to the prep rooms and galleys.

[luvcruzing]

OKay, I'm going to start popping the popcorn now.

[PelicanBill]

This is silly. I saw the pallets of fresh and frozen foods on my behind the scenes tours. I saw the butchery which is separated into the different kinds of meats to avoid cross-contamination. Breads would be the easiest to bring aboard frozen but I saw the bakery which operates 24x7. Or soup - I saw the soup being made!

[chengkp75]

What a ridiculous statement. I'm sure there is at least one microwave in every galley. Likely a few in the bigger main galleys. Probably a bunch in the crew quarters. But, yes, I agree, not enough to heat everyone's meals.

 

This is such a cop out rationalization of the poor quality food ships are serving. I know of at least a couple of banquet halls that regularly serve 1000 meals in one sitting, and the food served is as good as even the finest restaurants and better than most restaurants. Feeding a large number is no excuse for the low quality served on ships these days.

 

Sorry, I speak from experience. There are a couple of microwaves in a few spots like the dessert prep or pastry areas to heat things like chocolate sauces, etc, but that's about it. They don't use the microwave to defrost things like you do at home, its not the ubiquitous appliance it is at home. They have completely separate rooms with their own walk-in chill boxes, for the defrosting, break-down, and prep of meats and fishes. Crew quarters? Nope. They cannot even take meals back to their cabins like the passengers can. You eat at prescribed meal hours, or not at all, and certainly not in the quarters. The other problem with microwaves is that most of them are not temperature controlled. The food safety requirements say that unless the food is under temperature control (an appliance where you can actually control the temperature of cooking or heating), then it must be on time control, and discarded within 4 hours regardless of whether used or not. So, anything that is heated in a microwave has left temperature control (and you can't go back to temp control once on time control), must be served or discarded within 4 hours.

 

Let me ask you about these banquet halls, and 1000 covers would be a very small cruise ship. Do they require a sign-up for the various entrees served, so they know in advance how many of each to make? I know that is the way lots of halls do it. The ship doesn't have that ability, you can come in and ask for anything on the menu, and it has to be prepped already. And while I have had some good entrees in banquet halls, like for a wedding reception, I would not say that any of them have ranked with more than a chain restaurant's fare.

[chengkp75]

This is silly. I saw the pallets of fresh and frozen foods on my behind the scenes tours. I saw the butchery which is separated into the different kinds of meats to avoid cross-contamination. Breads would be the easiest to bring aboard frozen but I saw the bakery which operates 24x7. Or soup - I saw the soup being made!

 

Yep, the original comment that small items like baked goods would be made onboard, but meals ashore struck me as completely backward. I do know that the only baked goods that regularly come aboard already baked are hamburger and hotdog buns, just because of the quality control (size, shape) that factory baking gives these goods.

 

Soup made in 35 gallon kettles. It sure would be easier to open a bunch of cans. But they don't.

[cathi007]

Having just toured the kitchen on Escape last week, I can categorically deny that this the case.

 

Otherwise, there would be several banks of microwaves instead of the huge array of cooking equipment where staff works 24 hours a day.

 

Everything is prepared on board. If not, they sure are wasting a lot of money by having all those huge walk-in refrigerators and freezers stocked with boxes of food.

 

Frankly, I found the food to be uniformly excellent, but I don't subscribe to "Epicurian" magazine

 

I agree, I was on the Gem a few years ago and the food was amazing.

[josephmz]

I just want to know how they take the crew of the ship each night and then get them back before dawn.

[wdsted]

The only thing that I know is pre-prepared are the egg rolls and pot stickers served in Jasmine. My hubby has a special diet (low sodium) and they couldn't provide an alternative.

[Sauer-kraut]

OKay, I'm going to start popping the popcorn now.

Is it microwave popcorn??:')

[sfaaa]

I like Swanson dinner.