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Akshaya Patra innovative cooking scheme – Mass Production of Food, India Style

Here is something that we dont see everyday and something that we can all be inspired by.. The volume is mind boggling and amazing.. For those of you that dont know what kind of Indian food this is :

Rice = Steamed Rice
Sambar = A Vegetable and Lentil Curry
Chapatti = Indian Bread made of wheat or cake flour

Click on the images to see the enlarged version..

: The kitchen from the outside – a three-storey building which uses Gravity Flow Mechanism developed. Each kitchen has the capacity to cook between 50 000 to 100 000 mid-day meals per day. Costing approximately 9 crores to set up, they are built with funds from public donations.

: The kitchen from the inside, consisting of rice cauldrons each of which cooks up to 110kg of rice in 20 minutes. Sambar cauldrons cook up to 1200 litres of sambar in two hours.

: It is washed thoroughly on the 2nd floor

: Rice pours down into steam heated cauldrons for cooking. The entire cooking process takes place on the 1st floor

: Super heated steam is used to cook food instead of flame.

: When cooking is finished, it is loaded into trolleys

: Cooked rice is sent down the chute to the ground floor

: It flows down the pipe into containers

: Piping hot rice on its way to being loaded into food vans. Around 6000 kilosof rice are cooked daily in each kitchen.

: Food materials in Kitchen

: Stock in the kitchen

: Washed dal and vegetables flows down the chute into sambar cauldron on the 1st floor.

: Vegetables and dal ready to be cooked

: Sambar being cooked on the first floor

: Cooked sambar is packed and sent to the food vans to be loaded.

: Chapatti dough is mixed

: Heavy rollers flatten the dough into thin sheets

: Dough is cut into the classic round shape

: Making chapatti

: Collecting all the chapattis

: Transporting akshayapatra food through bus

: Happy Kids

: Students benifited from akshayapatra!!

Note that this is fresh food prepared daily with no chemicals, preservatives or artificial flavourants used in the process, there is no leftover food, and no refrigerators are used for storing stale food.

The story of how Akshaya Patra developed can be read here : http://www.akshayapatra.org/history..