The William Inglis Hotel - Luxury hotel - We're against food waste

We’re against food waste!

This International Day of Awareness of Food Loss, we interviewed our Junior Sou Chef Suman to hear how The William Inglis Hotel is using culinary creativity to combat food wastage.

Chef Suman talked us through how a key ingredient – PORK BELLY! Has become a hero product across our specialty dishes and how its multi-use properties allow for delicious dishes with minimal food waste.

……………………

WHY IS MINIMISING FOOD WASTE IMPORTANT?

Chef Suman: A La Carte event menus can naturally result in a high amount of food wastage due to custom portion sizing and being a tailor-made product. An example of this is our popular pork belly dish that is served with caramelised apple, salt baked turnip sweet potato and jus.

A slab of pork belly may only produce 15 portion sizes suitable for an event, when we are hosting events of 200+ guests this can result in an excess of offcuts from all of the slabs of meat.

HOW ARE YOU REDUCING FOOD WASTE?

Chef Suman: Rather than letting these cuts of meats go to waste our team is able to utilise this meat for other dishes like our Heroic Café Fried Rice Special.

When preparing the Pork Belly for our events menu, we factor in the three layers of the pork – The Skin, the fat and the meat. Firstly, the pork skin is sliced, scored and scalded in preparation for cooking. The layer of fat in between the skin and the meat is removed and then cut into small pieces. Our team slow cooks the fat and heats it into a pork lard which can then be later used for cooking. The crispy pork belly is served to our wonderful event guests and the remaining pork, fat and crackling is repurposed into new dishes.

The Heroic Café Fried Rice is a great dish that showcases the repurpose of food items and limiting wastage. The pork features in our Fried Rice alongside our home-grown coriander and scallions. Any garnishes that are pre-cut but not used on the fried rice are then also used in making Nam Jim dressing for salads.

……………………

Chef Suman highlights the beneficial relationship between our restaurant, café and event menus. We are excited to continue learning the innovative techniques of our Chefs and the hotels movement towards Zero Waste.