When Don Paul Smith started Enersyst more than 30 years ago to produce his inventions such as the automatic chicken plucker and a cheese coloring and grating process, pizzas took close to 45 minutes to bake. After Smith invented the hot air impingement heating system, cooking time was cut by 60%. Pizza houses, such as Dominos, could then offer and guarantee home delivery within 30 minutes.
In the late 1980s, NASA contracted the company to develop a fast, high-quality oven for the Space Station. One of NASA's criteria, says Michael Dobie, vice president of engineering for Enersyst, was an oven that prepared food for the whole crew so they could eat together. "In space, one doesn't have a lot of room or power to work with," he says. Enersyst engineers decided they could decrease cooking times by adding microwave capabilities. The microwave provided the extra heat required to cook the interior of the food, while impingement heated the exterior.
The AIM (Air Impingement Microwave) oven sold by Lincoln Foodservice Equipment Inc. (Fort Wayne, IN) brought the NASA process to restaurants. Because the microwave field thaws and heats the food product while the jets cook the food's surface, the Enersyst oven could be used for a wider variety of foods, fresh or frozen. And as restaurants expanded the types of food cooked in the oven--pizza, hamburgers, Mexican, seafood--Enersyst decided to bring their technology into the home.
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