<div><em><strong>Simar Singh</strong> visits Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s Central Kitchen in Noida</em><br><br>14,000 chapattis, 2,500 soup sticks, 6,000 kachoris and 10,000 complete meals are just a few of the incredible figures of the food churned out, daily, by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s Central Kitchen in Noida.</div><div> </div><div>Tucked away in Nioda's Sector 64, this facility has even been featured on the National Geographic series, ‘<em>India’s Megakitchens</em>’ and they are on a mission to bring railway goodness to corporates situated nearby. Apart from the Ahmedabad Rajdhani and Sealdah Duronto trains, they also fulfil the gastronomical needs (at extremely reasonable prices) of Supertech, HCL sectors 57 and 60, Samsung sectors 62 and 126, McGraw Hill, Ameriprise and Oxford University Press.</div><div> </div><div>Before our tour of the kitchens begins, hairnets are handed out and Sudhir Warrier, AGM Hospitality, tells us about the great demand that is there for IRCTC’s catering. He later tells me that the facility has the capacity of producing 25,000 meals of which it is producing 10,000. “Hopefully by the end of this year we’ll be able to optimize our output. We have the space all we need now is more equipment.”</div><div> </div><div><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/IRCTC-KITCHEN2-lrg.jpg" style="width: 650px; height: 384px; margin: 1px;"><br><br>We are shuffled off to an area where, every morning at 11:30, Mother Dairy delivers fresh vegetables the gate from where they are wheeled down a ramp, straight in the Washing and Sanitizing Room where the crates of tomatoes and leafies are washed with water and chlorine tablets. Then they go straight to the mise en place room, where they are chopped up, to be used for the next meal. By this time the vegetables prepped for lunch have already left.<br> </div><div>There is an impressive machine to cut the fresh produce, with a heavyweight name, ‘Hallide RG 400’. It can be fitted with a variety of blades to facilitate all kinds of cuts. S. Suresh, who has worked for IRCTC for 8 years and for two at this place, tells us that the machine can cut 20 kilos per minute adding, “It also gives a uniform size and thickness which makes the cut pieces easy to cook.</div><div> </div><div>Other machines include a large automated pestle for chutneys and idli batter and a potato peeler which can skin 10 kilos of the vegetable within 15 minutes.</div><div> </div><div>In accordance with the stringent Indian Railways regulations, there are two separate kitchens for the cooking of vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. Both have huge basins which can be used for cooking. At that moment, the line of basins in the vegetarian kitchen is full of onions at different stages of preparation.</div><div> </div><div>On the other side is a spherical “electric kettle” which can be used to cook rice, dal and soup. It has an auto-cut option, which means that once the cooking is done, the machine switches itself off.</div><div> </div><div>The facility also hosts a Roti Room, dedicated to making and packaging the chapattis and most of this process is mechanised right from making the dough, cutting it into portions, rolling it out and cooking. The journey of a portion of dough to a chapatti takes a mere 90 seconds, after which it is buttered and wrapped by hand at an unbelievable speed.</div><div> </div><div>Apart from these, the Central Kitchen also has a room where the mithai is made, a bakery where soup sticks are rolled out and baked, as well as an in-house laboratory to monitor the quality of the raw materials and the food produced and a research and development kitchen.</div><div> </div><div>What one understands, that this kitchen is always buzzing with activity, at the end of the day, everything is immaculately taken care of, every gulab jamun is individually boxed and preperations have already been made to kick-start the next day.</div>
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