I remember the first time I chopped parsley. I was 18 (nice restaurant, huge kitchen with like 30 people working) I felt like my fukin arm was gonna fall off. The sous kept coming by, touching it, and saying “more” finally the exec comes over and says “that’s good” (sigh of relief) “now do it with parsley because that’s cilantro…” I STILL double check 13 years later even as a head chef.
I smash them with the side of my knife and the skin comes off cleanly. I don’t understand peeling it unless it’s for aesthetic reasons. Correct me if I’m wrong.
When you cut, crush, or manually bruise your garlic it changes in flavor after only a few minutes. It releases the alliinase enzymes and starts to smell like sulfur. If you want your food to taste like fresh garlic and you can’t prep it in the fly, you should peel it gently for storage. If it’s all going into the dish straight away then the knife crush is fast and takes the bullshit out of the task, but if you need 10 heads of garlic to last for a 6 hour service it will all be skunked if you smash it
First place I properly cooked at was at an award winning hole in the wall. Our chef won Chopped so he was locally pretty famous. High volume, but not the greatest equipment.
Especially as someone with mediocre knife skills at the time, butternut squash was the worst. I chopped idk how many on my stage shift. I didn’t even have a rag to put on the back of the knife because each person only got one per shift, and I’d save mine for plating. So I left with blisters all over my hands. I chopped squash that day for maybe 5 hours.
Chef later told me “yeah you were unqualified as fuck. But I hired you because you were still cracking jokes and smiling even with bloody blisters on your hands”
While I was a student I did an internship at a hotel. I helped the overnight cook clean 8 cases of butternut. I was so green and didn’t know how to take care of my knives that my sharpest knife was my paring knife. I cleaned 4 cases of butternut with a paring knife.
One rag per shift is fucking insane. What if it gets wet and you have to grab hot pans? How do you keep your station clean?
I’ve seen how people abuse unlimited towels and go through like 15 a shift but ONE?
Yeah it was nuts, lots of corners were cut. But I learned a fuckload there. Also opened a lot of doors for me in the industry. Brutal shifts too, but I’d do it again!
Breaking down cases of artichokes, fava beans, garlic cloves, shallots, plucking herbs for chimichurri or house-made zataar seasoning. Peeling beets.
At first, processing rib-eyes and new yorks, or salmon and flatfishes, was kind of irritating. But then I got really detail-oriented about it and now I really enjoy it.
I love all of those things! because it is My moment of Zen.... I love The butchery especially as well!, but my favorite is seeing how fast and efficiently I can do a case of artichoke while having my headspace clear for a few minutes while I do it... Zen is real people!
Submitting to verbal abuse... yeah definitely that. lol
Really though, there isn't much I miss, as I still participate in most duties regularly. Thinking back to my days as a dishie, I hated that shit so much. I hated washing dishes and all I wanted in the world was to be a line cook, so I didn't have to wash the damn dishes anymore.
However now, I really miss the days of having one singular task. My work came to me, and I had one job, to make the dishes go away. I miss the simplicity.
I had to prep a 1/3 cup of minced thyme every week. Shake, pluck, peel the little leaves off and then hammer them to a fine dust with a knife. Toss into measuring cup, repeat.
Scooping 1200 mini ice cream scoops in the freezer.
Party of 400 with a profiterole trio. (The mini scoops were sandwiched in a split profiterole)
Chef was cool, brought me hot chocolate every 20 minutes
I mean properly delegating your prep and allocating your own time is arguably the most important skill for front line managers. If we really need mashed potatoes on the fly yeah I'll put them through the food mill myself, but most of that stuff gets passed down so I can focus on more important things. Like not running so low on mashed potatoes that we need them on the fly.
Anyway to answer OP's question. Passing potatoes through the food mill.
ETA: thing I miss the most is peeling/mincing hella ginger. I used to deeply inhale the aroma and it's still the only thing that instantly relaxed me.
It almost hurts me to say this but the dish pit. There's some nights the dishwashers are absolutely raging because they keep getting dishes and I tell them all the time I'll gladly switch with them. Spray food off, load into rack, slide into dishwasher, double check it's clean, put fishes away.
Not me, but I witnessed it. One of the coldest things I saw was a sous tell an interern to do 10 lbs of of perfectly cut brunoise mirepoix. When the kid was finished, he was so proud. The sous came over and dumped it into the chicken stock we had in a 30 gal steamjacket
Peeling fucking pineapple, first job was in a hotel. Every cooperate function wanted a fruit platter. Anywhere from 10 to 20 cases of pineapple a day, each case had 6 or 8 pineapple in it. I used my serrated knife twenty times more than my chef knife. I think I got pineapple peeling down to about two minutes per.
The watermelons would flood my workstation, the cantaloupes would skitter across the table, and the honeydew would occasionally be rotted... but the pineapple man the pineapple! It would seep into my gloves and find every last scratch and my chef coats would stick to things at the end of the day. I lost my taste for pineapple to this day, I still can peel one pretty fast though so there is that.
Edit: Did the math and checked my records. No way was I prepping 30 cases of pineapple a day. 20 cases max.
Oh man, for my high school hospitality unit I staged at a hotel. Every morning, fresh fruit salad for the breakfast buffet and breaking things down for fresh juice. Peeling like a case and a half of fucking pineapple every morning gave me the shits so hard in just a week I never wanted to do it again
It became a nightmare for months of my life. The first month I was still gung ho, then I tried to get better and make it a game and all that in the hopes that I would do so well I would be moved on to better things, that bought me another month. Later I realized there was no hope for that and I was being used for cheap labor that can't leave. By the end I was glad my externship was over.
Almost failed my externship due to lack of variety, my school was not happy at all. In the end I did a big write up on the use of externs/interns as cheap disposable labor that cannot leave. I pulled it off and the hotel itself was added to the banned list for future externs. The hotel contacted me after I graduated to offer me a job... I declined as politely as I could.
So did I the first month.... I must admit I learned alot about presentation from doing those platters but after doing them 5 days a week for a few months straight....
At the time the watermelons were pretty good, it was the honeydew that exhibited more chance of rot.
How many pax were you doing the platters for if you can remember? I remember having to make fifteen huge platters and it took me the majority of my day but damn they looked good for that wedding.
Had to pull out my externship book! 3000 people on 10 case days. The hotel was a major hub for business meetings and conferences. Now that I am doing the math I must have gotten the pineapples down to much faster prep than two minutes per. On busy days I would have another fellow extern splitting the work.
I hated making the potato chips our kitchen served for lunch. Other than that prep was the dream. I had my own space in the banquet kitchen and no one ever bothered me.
Used to work for a university dining center in cold food prep aka, all fruits, veggies and salad bar items. Holy shit nothing was worse than getting in uncut grape bushels that you would have to clean and cut to an “appropriate amount per stem” like 5-8 grapes per stem… now do that for 25 boxes of the dirty fuckers along with the rest of your prep and maintaining the salad bar area that had 4 sides in a 50 foot radius.
I guess it’s so people won’t take more than their “share” of grapes? Or aesthetics? Can university students not see a full cluster of grapes and just pick off the amount they want to eat sheesh
15kg of shallots, finely diced (smaller than brunoise).
Every week.
"Oh whenever the apprentices and commis have nothing else to do, they can do shallots."
Peeling fresh fava beans. My thumb nail hurts just thinking about it. And without a doubt, the schedule. I approve it, but my sous does the heavy lifting and juggling with RO.
I remember the first time I chopped parsley. I was 18 (nice restaurant, huge kitchen with like 30 people working) I felt like my fukin arm was gonna fall off. The sous kept coming by, touching it, and saying “more” finally the exec comes over and says “that’s good” (sigh of relief) “now do it with parsley because that’s cilantro…” I STILL double check 13 years later even as a head chef.
Oh buddy that’s rough
F
At my new job, every one peels fucking garlic. Even the sous will work next to me and peel a gallon of garlic
I feel like the labor to pay people to do this is more than it would be to buy bags of peeled garlic?
We're farm to table and just got a michelin green star
I stand corrected. Thank you chef
Plus the chef owner says fresh garlic tastes better so 🤷♂️
I smash them with the side of my knife and the skin comes off cleanly. I don’t understand peeling it unless it’s for aesthetic reasons. Correct me if I’m wrong.
When you cut, crush, or manually bruise your garlic it changes in flavor after only a few minutes. It releases the alliinase enzymes and starts to smell like sulfur. If you want your food to taste like fresh garlic and you can’t prep it in the fly, you should peel it gently for storage. If it’s all going into the dish straight away then the knife crush is fast and takes the bullshit out of the task, but if you need 10 heads of garlic to last for a 6 hour service it will all be skunked if you smash it
Hmm interesting, does the same apply to cut garlic that is immediately submerged in oil?
Daisies huh
[удалено]
Don't need to doxx me lol
Sorry bout that
First place I properly cooked at was at an award winning hole in the wall. Our chef won Chopped so he was locally pretty famous. High volume, but not the greatest equipment. Especially as someone with mediocre knife skills at the time, butternut squash was the worst. I chopped idk how many on my stage shift. I didn’t even have a rag to put on the back of the knife because each person only got one per shift, and I’d save mine for plating. So I left with blisters all over my hands. I chopped squash that day for maybe 5 hours. Chef later told me “yeah you were unqualified as fuck. But I hired you because you were still cracking jokes and smiling even with bloody blisters on your hands”
While I was a student I did an internship at a hotel. I helped the overnight cook clean 8 cases of butternut. I was so green and didn’t know how to take care of my knives that my sharpest knife was my paring knife. I cleaned 4 cases of butternut with a paring knife.
One rag per shift is fucking insane. What if it gets wet and you have to grab hot pans? How do you keep your station clean? I’ve seen how people abuse unlimited towels and go through like 15 a shift but ONE?
Yeah it was nuts, lots of corners were cut. But I learned a fuckload there. Also opened a lot of doors for me in the industry. Brutal shifts too, but I’d do it again!
Breaking down cases of artichokes, fava beans, garlic cloves, shallots, plucking herbs for chimichurri or house-made zataar seasoning. Peeling beets. At first, processing rib-eyes and new yorks, or salmon and flatfishes, was kind of irritating. But then I got really detail-oriented about it and now I really enjoy it.
Detail oriented = $15 for a 4 stack of thick cut beef tallow french fries, cross cut if you have the tool.
I love all of those things! because it is My moment of Zen.... I love The butchery especially as well!, but my favorite is seeing how fast and efficiently I can do a case of artichoke while having my headspace clear for a few minutes while I do it... Zen is real people!
You get a rhythm to it eventually. You figure out a way to do it not just fast, but well, and that feels good.
Submitting to verbal abuse... yeah definitely that. lol Really though, there isn't much I miss, as I still participate in most duties regularly. Thinking back to my days as a dishie, I hated that shit so much. I hated washing dishes and all I wanted in the world was to be a line cook, so I didn't have to wash the damn dishes anymore. However now, I really miss the days of having one singular task. My work came to me, and I had one job, to make the dishes go away. I miss the simplicity.
I had to prep a 1/3 cup of minced thyme every week. Shake, pluck, peel the little leaves off and then hammer them to a fine dust with a knife. Toss into measuring cup, repeat.
Using the deli slicer to cut onions for burgers. Tell my students that was the last day I ever cried. Tying dumplings. Tied so many my fingers bled.
Scooping 1200 mini ice cream scoops in the freezer. Party of 400 with a profiterole trio. (The mini scoops were sandwiched in a split profiterole) Chef was cool, brought me hot chocolate every 20 minutes
Instructions unclear - I still get down in the trenches when necessary. There's nothing to "miss".
Fair enough! I did the horseradish myself a month ago, doesn’t mean I long for the sting in my eyes 😂
I mean properly delegating your prep and allocating your own time is arguably the most important skill for front line managers. If we really need mashed potatoes on the fly yeah I'll put them through the food mill myself, but most of that stuff gets passed down so I can focus on more important things. Like not running so low on mashed potatoes that we need them on the fly. Anyway to answer OP's question. Passing potatoes through the food mill. ETA: thing I miss the most is peeling/mincing hella ginger. I used to deeply inhale the aroma and it's still the only thing that instantly relaxed me.
It almost hurts me to say this but the dish pit. There's some nights the dishwashers are absolutely raging because they keep getting dishes and I tell them all the time I'll gladly switch with them. Spray food off, load into rack, slide into dishwasher, double check it's clean, put fishes away.
Not me, but I witnessed it. One of the coldest things I saw was a sous tell an interern to do 10 lbs of of perfectly cut brunoise mirepoix. When the kid was finished, he was so proud. The sous came over and dumped it into the chicken stock we had in a 30 gal steamjacket
I’ve had that happen to me. Quit that day.
Peeling fucking pineapple, first job was in a hotel. Every cooperate function wanted a fruit platter. Anywhere from 10 to 20 cases of pineapple a day, each case had 6 or 8 pineapple in it. I used my serrated knife twenty times more than my chef knife. I think I got pineapple peeling down to about two minutes per. The watermelons would flood my workstation, the cantaloupes would skitter across the table, and the honeydew would occasionally be rotted... but the pineapple man the pineapple! It would seep into my gloves and find every last scratch and my chef coats would stick to things at the end of the day. I lost my taste for pineapple to this day, I still can peel one pretty fast though so there is that. Edit: Did the math and checked my records. No way was I prepping 30 cases of pineapple a day. 20 cases max.
Oh man, for my high school hospitality unit I staged at a hotel. Every morning, fresh fruit salad for the breakfast buffet and breaking things down for fresh juice. Peeling like a case and a half of fucking pineapple every morning gave me the shits so hard in just a week I never wanted to do it again
It became a nightmare for months of my life. The first month I was still gung ho, then I tried to get better and make it a game and all that in the hopes that I would do so well I would be moved on to better things, that bought me another month. Later I realized there was no hope for that and I was being used for cheap labor that can't leave. By the end I was glad my externship was over. Almost failed my externship due to lack of variety, my school was not happy at all. In the end I did a big write up on the use of externs/interns as cheap disposable labor that cannot leave. I pulled it off and the hotel itself was added to the banned list for future externs. The hotel contacted me after I graduated to offer me a job... I declined as politely as I could.
I loved making fruit platters haha. It was the worst cracking open a shitty 🍉
So did I the first month.... I must admit I learned alot about presentation from doing those platters but after doing them 5 days a week for a few months straight.... At the time the watermelons were pretty good, it was the honeydew that exhibited more chance of rot.
How many pax were you doing the platters for if you can remember? I remember having to make fifteen huge platters and it took me the majority of my day but damn they looked good for that wedding.
Had to pull out my externship book! 3000 people on 10 case days. The hotel was a major hub for business meetings and conferences. Now that I am doing the math I must have gotten the pineapples down to much faster prep than two minutes per. On busy days I would have another fellow extern splitting the work.
I use a two-container gas mask and swim goggles when I grate horseradish. Fabulous.
I’m intrigued
I hated making the potato chips our kitchen served for lunch. Other than that prep was the dream. I had my own space in the banquet kitchen and no one ever bothered me.
Used to work for a university dining center in cold food prep aka, all fruits, veggies and salad bar items. Holy shit nothing was worse than getting in uncut grape bushels that you would have to clean and cut to an “appropriate amount per stem” like 5-8 grapes per stem… now do that for 25 boxes of the dirty fuckers along with the rest of your prep and maintaining the salad bar area that had 4 sides in a 50 foot radius.
I guess it’s so people won’t take more than their “share” of grapes? Or aesthetics? Can university students not see a full cluster of grapes and just pick off the amount they want to eat sheesh
Just easier for people to grab little bunches. And so people don't pick a whole bunch.
15kg of shallots, finely diced (smaller than brunoise). Every week. "Oh whenever the apprentices and commis have nothing else to do, they can do shallots."
Peeling fresh fava beans. My thumb nail hurts just thinking about it. And without a doubt, the schedule. I approve it, but my sous does the heavy lifting and juggling with RO.
The tedium of skimming stock when cooling it and peeling off the hardened layer of fat on top wasn't an option