How do professional kitchens keep their cookware so clean, especially items like baking sheets & roasting trays?
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About truongthanhtung93
Written by: truongthanhtung93
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How do professional kitchens keep their cookware so clean, especially items like baking sheets & roasting trays?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “professional kitchen cookware“
About truongthanhtung93
IMO, you’re confusing as-seen-on-TV Pro kitchens, usually High End, Ridiculously High Priced places, ones with lots of staff & not very old equipment, with most other Pro kitchens, ones that you will never see the inner workings of, that is, unless you’re a fellow inner worker.
In my experience, every kitchen, even fine dining, I ever worked in, other than fast food (where they barely cook), had pots, pans and sheet trays with years, and often decades of baked-on, rock-hard black layers, esp. on the bottons and around the edges. We always kept th the actual cooking surfaces mega clean.
Reason being is your ave. Pro kitchen rarely has enough staff needed to simply cook all the food AND clean all the dishes as plates come back.
Also, we generally have lots of identical pans, so rarely need to reuse many during service. And def no time to F with them during service, or desire to fully scrub & scour them after, or force our lowly dishwasher(s) stay until 2–3 am to do so either.
So as we go, used pans usually just get tossed in the sink (hopefully to soak) or (hopefully not) on a lower shelf as we go, rarely ever getting a full exterior scrub, or even wipe, before, after or in between.
So by the time even a new pan gets a couple-few black layers, they become near impossible to scrub clean, even with professional grade heavy duty stainless steel scouring pads. Yes, not 100% impossible, but way too time & labor consuming, thus costly, esp. as kitchen staff labor costs can make or break a restaurant, so must always be kept in check.
But if it’s a new restaurant, o…
Non-Stick Cookware Set, Pots and Pans – 8-Piece Set
Keith Gordon’s answer is pretty direct. I’ve worked in kitchens as sous, line and as the “hey, watch this while I do that” guy when I was a young man. The only thing I did very little of was the actual scrubbing, but it is like Keith says. Working kitchens use bare-metal pans so they can be aggressively scrubbed with metal. While I loved my Calphalon anodized decades ago, I gifted that (very expensive set with accessories) to my ex and started over with Cuisinart clad steel. MUCH easier to keep clean and you can see when you’ve missed ANYTHING. Steel on the insides and nylon on the outsides because ‘perdy.’
A key to washing pans properly is to KEEP THEM WET until you get to them. They will slough off anything. There are advantages to having “seasoned” cookware like woks, but I have both naked steel and seasoned steel as well as a hardkote heavy aluminum one. Different pans do different jobs.
Bakeware is like this: for actual baked items like cakes or torts, use the best porcelain you can afford. If you aren’t clumsy, it will last a lifetime. Pillivuyt is the gold standard in baking porcelain and they make the big pans, too, but it’s expensive.
If you ever look at a kitchen’s baking pans and trays, you’ll see that they’re scratched into a haze. That’s the steel wool. If a deeper scratch appears, which is bad news, brass wool may be used to soften it out. Clearly, when you are so aggressively cleaning such things, they do wear out, losing metal a little bit at a time. I’ve found some awesome used bakeware at restaurant equipment sales. May not be good enough for use half a dozen times a night anymore, but it can surely serve me nicely a few times a year or month and at a fraction of what a new one would cost. PLUS, I know it’s actually clean!
Dishwashers make a difference and being able to grab an 8″ saute without worry, since you’ll go through them like mad and can’t be slowed down with sticky or hanging pan surfaces.
And if you love to make lasagna or kibbee or other baked fatty foods, porcelain is simply astonishing and takes cleaning very gracefully. I wouldn’t do some egg dishes without porcelain!
So, the short answer? Elbow grease and getting that pan in the sink FAST. If you leave stuff overnight, very bad. A well-cleaned pan, even with burnt on cheese or chocolate (stinky) only needs a half hour or so soak at most to get it to largely release and then you can scrub it shiny. With steel wool. Or brass wool if it’s one of “those” personal favorite pans that one of the chefs wants to keep beautious.
10 Pcs Non Stick Cooking Set w/ Frying Pans & Saucepans
I see no reason that baking sheets or baking pans should ever be spotless; it’s sterilized by being in the oven and if whatever doesn’t easily scrub off, it’s not coming off in your food.
Skillets & pots are a different story. Soaking fixes anything other than a total disaster, and over cleaner fixes the total disaster.
BELLA 21 Piece Cook Bake and Store Set
“The working iron never rusts” – these tools and utensils are being continuously used and then thrown into big sinks full of detergent. Even after very light use these things are being scrubbed again and again.
“green scrubbies” – these things are the best !
Dedicated staff – it’s someones sole job to make sure these tools are spotless.
Pan liners – Kitchens use a lot of parchment paper, sil pats, and aluminum foil cover sheets before baking/roasting/etc. food on them to keep much of the grease off of them in the first place.
Probably the most effective: “If you burn it you clean it.” rule in some kitchens. No cooks hiding that rondeau with hyper caramelized onion crust grafted to the bottom of it under the suds and pretending like nothing happened. You will be found out and you will be chipping away at that mess with a putty knife until it’s back in working order.
Calphalon 10-Piece Pots and Pans Set, Nonstick Kitchen Cookware
easy off
edited: i really liked my shorter answer but ~ use stainless steel pans, heavy duty green scrubbers work better for me than the aluminium. sometime oils work better than soap. hot pans are easier to clean. every 6 months or so i easy off my pans, mostly the backside.
Gotham Steel 20 Piece Pots & Pans Set Complete Kitchen Cookware + Bakeware Set
I mainly use commercial grade cookware in the kitchen. It is heavy gauge stainless steel, not coated, and is nigh on indestructible. If something sticks, it gets taken off with wire scourers. If you’re brutal, it isn’t hard.
It isn’t cheap, but it will last fairly much forever in domestic use , and do a better job than the cheap ones…want to run a steel pallet knife under stuff on a teflon tray? How about putting your coated roasting tray straight on the heat to deglaze and make a gravy?
Most of the rest is cast iron and enamel, so also hard wearing. I think the only teflon cookwear I have anywhere is a crepe pan..
GreenLife Soft Grip Healthy Ceramic Nonstick 16 Piece
Do NOT cut labour costs by allowing things to just get that cooked on look.
A standard should be held that any new piece of Equipment or Cookware should look the same as the day it was purchased.
The Chef needs to set the standard on cleanliness and never let up.
Regardless of where you are at throughout a shift you should be able to walk a customer through your kitchen and have them be amazed at the cleanliness level.
Some Chefs have a tendency to let the “cooked with” look creep into their equipment, tools, walls etc. It grows in your kitchen like an inorganic mould.
There is also the added benefit of pride. NO ONE WANTS TO work in a dirty or dirty looking kitchen. If they do, you have the wrong people.
EVERYTHING in the kitchen should be on a constant cleaning routine with clearly defined responsibilities as to who should be cleaning what and when. Just as important is HOW to clean things properly.
The sense of pride you and your cooks get when walking into a sparkling and well organized kitchen will ALWAYS spill over into how the food looks and is executed.
The 2 go hand in hand.
As for baking sheets and roasting pans? Hit them while they are hot!!! Good old …
T-fal Ultimate Hard Anodized Nonstick 17 Piece Cookware Set
Stainless steel and steel wool. If something gets cooked onto the pan, fill it with a little water, bring to a boil, and scrape with a steel spatula. Then clean with steel wool. Also, stainless steel pots and pans do great in today’s residential dishwashers. I have 2 non-stick pans, a small one and a large one. Don’t waste money on expensive non-stick pans. Buy the ones at restaurant supply stores, stick them in the dishwasher. When they start to look used, toss and buy another one. I guarantee you those expensive ones last no longer than the cheap ones no matter how well you treat them.
T-fal Ultimate Hard Anodized Nonstick 17 Piece Cookware Set
Before my son went to university he took a part time job in a restaurant; a relatively small bistro. He did an evening shift and didn’t get home till way past midnight. Every evening all the pots, pans and trays were thoroughly scrubbed clean using hot soapy water and wire wool pads. They also cleaned the whole kitchen every evening.
So to keep your kitchen spotlessly clean you need some cheap labour and close supervision.
Calphalon 10-Piece Pots and Pans Set, Nonstick Kitchen
Washing up is not an optional part of cooking.
“Working clean” is a concept drilled into chefs from the first moment they step into a kitchen. It means more than simply wiping down surfaces and washing pots; it means putting things where you found them so you’re ready to do the next task.
The mindset of a chef is to always have their station as clean as possible, says Keith Luce, chef at The Herbfarm. Every time you have a spare moment, there’s something that must be done. If you put washing dishes into that equation, it’s easy to see that at the end of the whole task — the task being preparing the meal — it’s pretty easy to work those things out.
T-fal Signature Nonstick Dishwasher Safe Cookware Set, 12-Piece
Add to the other answers really hot water. Very probably your water heater is adjusted to fairly low temp as a matter of public safety, our area it is 112f. Whether it is a restaurant or a commercial laundry, the industrial standard for hot water is much hotter, 190–195f. Commercial dishwashing detergent is much stronger also
T-fal C561SC Titanium Advanced Nonstick Thermo-Spot Heat Indicator Dishwashe
They have people that wash everything right after it’s used so any thing burnt on is cleaned right away. There are also dish washing machine much more powerful than the home dish washers.
Cuisinart Chef’s Classic Non-Stick Hard Anodized, 17-Piece
It is interesting all the answers that talk about clean pots and pans (especially sheets often used for broiling and baking). I am guessing the level of OCD is at a Michelin starred chef level. Every commercial kitchen I have been in has pans, pots and sheets that look like they are used extensively. Some places hang shiny pans and pots where the kitchen can be seen, but the pans that are sitting on the stove are brown with the oils and sauces that get burnt in on the outside. This is true for both European kitchens as well as American ones. Chinese restaurant kitchens always have the woks looking like they have been well seasoned (which they are, else they rust and food sticks). The only washing of the Wok is to rinse and scrub at the burner (they have a faucet there and a long handled scrubber to scrub while it is still hot right after cooking).
Gotham Steel Pots and Pans Set 12 Piece Cookware Set with Ultra Nonstick
When I was attending culinary arts school, I worked part-time for a local hospital cafe as prep and relief cook, preparing the breakfast bacon on sheet pans for the next morning shift. Those baking sheets went through a power cleaner, but since the ovens operated at about 400 degrees, over time, the sheet pans eventually never got completely clean. They were permanently stained and sometimes the staff who rinsed the pans before placing them on the dishwasher conveyor belt didn’t remove all the residue bacon. Plates, bowls and cups were cleaned thoroughly. Sheet pans really needed to be replaced when they become warped and discolored by carbon deposits, but minimizing replacement costs tends to be a factor in the real-world of commercial cooking. I agree with many of the other responses that we use some harsh chemical cleaners for sheet pans, but I never saw steel wool pads for cleaning.
T-fal, Dishwasher Safe Cookware Set, 18 Piece, Red