Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Personally, I don't think anyone should be in a restaurant kitchen until they've got a food safety certificate (super easy to get), and have learned the basics of being in that kind of setting, because it's so much different than your kitchen at home.


Edit: I got my food safety certificate, which covers sanitation, cross contamination, and general kitchen safety including WHMIS and such, from an open book test, overseen by a health inspector.

Some people still failed the test.

Got mine :D weeee

I was the only one who showed up to my "class" for that.

Was told it'd be a 90 minute "class". I was out of there in 40 minutes, and only because they HAD to go through the entire power point.

Most of it is common sense, the real information bit is necessary food temps. Easy ***to learn. Kitchen life is murder though. People don't understand how draining being surrounded by 350+F equipment is.

Or how mentally taxing the customer and chef quality expectations are under such strict time expectations.

my entire test only took about 40 minutes, which was just over half of my first class. my second period in high school was another culinary course, so I didn't have to sit through it again, and did the cooking for the lunch rush.

Made sure to take all 3 culinary courses offered in high school. Beginner's, Intermediate I, II, and III, all of which were only offered in the morning, and each section (theory, hot, cold, and bakery) were run by certified chefs, two of which owned highly successful catering businesses.

It can be physically and mentally exhausting for sure, especially when you work with idiots.

More so still when the idiots you work with are deliberately stupid.

Man, now I'm remembering cleaning the slicer at Arby's with that good ole chainmail gauntlet. Also the roasts were so hot they put cracks in my fingerprints. Food service is no joke, don't even wanna think of it at a proper restaurant.

Love it when people assume 'it's just fast food', where I work, there are so many procedures it aint even funny.

LET ME SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER, I'M DISGRUNTLED AT THE TIME OF WHICH THIS TEN MINUTE PIECE OF FISH TOOK TO COOK, when we tell them it will be ten minutes.

Retail©

Don't *** around with meat slicers man, that chainmail is the best thing ever. @_@

Stopped paying attention for a split second.

Fast food kitchens are also a lot more cramped than their casual dining and family restaurant kitchens, or at least that's been my personal experience, and I've yet to see anything showing otherwise.

Fast food, as low skill as some like to claim, you have to have speed and accuracy, but the machines can still be rather dangerous, floors have to be kept clean/swept/mopped, etc. to prevent slipping.

certain foods only have allowable holding times (which, to save money, some managers are willing to overlook)

I've got nothing severe, just a bunch scrapes and bruises and ***.

I did bust my knuckle open on the ice-cream machine trying to pry the faceplate off. I do love seeing me some bone.

in order to properly cook fish (grill or fryer), you need a minimum of 5-8 minutes, just for a small piece. If in the fryer, you need to add cooking time, depending on how much is in the fryer, and the temperature of the fryer, type of batter being used, etc.

Arby's Gyros are good.

Oh yeah, bruises and scrapes all the time.

Everything is made of stainless steel and walk-in cooler/freezer doors are extremely heavy. Cases of product are heavy. Stuff isn't stored safely all the time. etc etc etc

I've been pushed into an open convection oven door, which burned the entirety that made contact pretty badly.

Another time, because of faulty equipment, I burned my feet because the oil gushed out of the drainage pipe. Since that day, I have never worn anything less than steel toed boots to any job.

Another time, someone dropped a chef's knife - thankfully I had steel toe boots on, so no damage done.

Watched someone spill rapidly boiling water onto his shoes which were canvas topped. Immediately went out and bought solid covered shoes.

The bolded right there, is the number one cause of injury or illness in a kitchen. Things are not stored properly.

I found a lot of places would keep the heaviest product cases at the back, on the top shelves. This, where I am from, is illegal practice. For safety reasons, it has to be easily accessible, and removable by the front door, but out of the way. Meat has to be on the bottom shelf, a minimum of 6" above the floor. Then there's the holding times, and holding temps in the walk-ins.

Safely as in over packed, placement regarding cross contamination was fine 99% of the time. Usually a mistake new people made. Chef's sorted them out quickly though. Peter Ghione is pretty big on sanitation.

People making mistakes when they are new is fine, because that can be corrected.

And most times, if something is set up properly, the new scrubs don't make those mistakes to begin with, unless they are deliberately stupid.

Everything should be properly labeled, and dated. Which falls under being properly stored. If you've seen Kitchen Nightmares, Bar Rescue, or any number of restaurant make-over shows, you can and have seen the kind of ***that I'm talking about.

They aren't necessarily as bad, or extreme, but I've witnessed first hand some that were infuriatingly worse by leagues.

One place I started working at was selling moldy quiches to customers! They had 4 Managers on at all times. The kitchen manager would dip his hand into the holding trays and eat food off of customer plates, dip his hand in sanitizer, not even washing his hands or drying them, and repeat the process!

After farming goblins for about 3 hours finally got my Greed Portal to open.

If you click on the chest it slams shut for a gruesome gushy sound.

What game is that?

Diabro 3

What he said just less asian.

Striking a pose~