One of the biggest challenges for Chefs and Business owners in Foodservice is a lack of time and skill for their kitchens. But there are some simple ways that kitchens can become more efficient to help reduce the pressure of service and save time. Here are our 5 top tips to reduce cooking time in your kitchen.
1. Find balance in your menu
Reviewing you menu and the ingredients used on a regular basis is good practice and can also help you provide an opportunity to reduce skill and time on some of your dishes. It’s good to look at your menu as a whole and consider where you think requires more time and skill to ensure you continue to hit your customers’ quality expectations. Additionally, it’s a good way to check where you can make your chefs’ lives a little easier and find a good quality ready-made product to help you reduce prep time. For example, we have new pre-cooked rigatoni (code: 11111) and penne (code: 11112) pasta pouches that you can simply cook in your microwave and in minutes the pasta is ready to be added to your sauce to serve. Other products like pre-made sandwich fillings and the pre-made Little & Cull pulled pork (code: 74479) are really easy products to add to your menu.
2. Make your equipment cook quicker
There are a few tips for making your equipment work quicker for you. For example, our Chef Paul suggests using your oven on steam at 130⁰c to help your food cook quicker. Also, simply don’t overfill your pans with water when boiling, as this takes extra time and money.
3. Use pre-made mixes as your base – salads and vegetables
Cooking up grains and mixing together can take up a lot of time when preparing for the day, especially if you are serving lunch salad bars and have a variety of flavours to prepare. We’ve got an amazing range of four grain mixes from Cuisin’ Easy (codes: 11559, 11560, 50692, 50693) that are defrost and serve and are perfect for adding onto your menu as a component part of a dish or as one of your salad options.
4. Use no-cook or low cook proteins where possible
Using pre-cooked products instead of raw can really help reduce cooking time but also risk in your kitchen, especially if you have lower skilled kitchen staff in some of your restaurants. Things like pre-cooked chicken strips are easy to add to pasta dishes as well on top of things like pizza and we’ve got a great Chicken Skewer (code: 36839) that is perfect for adding your own flavours to before warming in the oven and/or searing on a grill.
5. Try to simplify the steps to prepare your dishes
If you are really time poor in your kitchen, especially for lunch menus or in casual dining spaces, build your menu so that for each dish you have just 3 to 4 simple steps to build your dish. This provides a simple construction of the dish and also can help you tap into customisation and personalisation. For example a menu that follows this format; choose your base, choose your protein, choose your sauce, and choose your topping, can be a really popular way to offer a varied menu for a busy lunch offering. It’s a method that works well for a lot of businesses already, it’s tried and tested and a popular concept for customers.
There you have it. You’ll find all of these products, menu and recipe suggestions on our Menu Solutions webpage along with videos of our development chefs cooking off some of the recipes and a shoppable digital guide to make it easy for you to add the products directly to your Bidfood Direct – our online shopbasket!
Start by decluttering the area around your sink. Remove any dishes, utensils, or appliances that don't belong there. Keep your dish soap, scrub brushes, and sponges within easy reach. Consider using a sink caddy or a hanging organizer to keep these items organized and readily available.
Reduction is performed by simmering or boiling a liquid, such as a stock, fruit or vegetable juice, wine, vinegar or sauce, until the desired concentration is reached by evaporation. This is done without a lid, enabling the vapor to escape from the mixture.
Sautéing is designed for fast cooking of relatively small quantities of food. It resembles stir-frying. 2. Stir-frying is a method that involves quickly cooking small, uniformly cut pieces of food in a large pan or wok over very high heat in a small amount of fat, while constantly stirring the food.
Whenever possible, I encourage you to cook extra to use later. For instance, make a double batch of a recipe to enjoy for two meals during the week (or freeze half for a few weeks from now). Or, cook extra grains, proteins, and vegetables to use in different dishes throughout the week.
Porridge. Porridge takes just a few minutes to make in a saucepan, and even less in a microwave. Instead of adding sugar or salt, scatter with a handful (80g) of fresh berries or other fruit to get one of your 5-a-day at the same time.
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