Restaurant Food Preparation Secrets

Restaurant Secrets - Food Preparation - as part of the food and kitchen series by GeoBeats.

Preparing some of your mise en place, or basic ingredients that you are going to need in a dish is very important. In a restaurant we do not take an onion and dice it and then saute it right before service. So what we will do is we will take as many onions as we need that night and we will cut them all in the morning. You can do that at home as well. You can even cut those onions and have them last in your fridge for a few days. Therefore you had have pre-diced onions so anytime you needed onions all you had have to do is take a handful, throw them in your pan, and that would speed up your cooking time tremendously. You can do the same thing with chopped parsley, chopped herbs, even cut-up garlic. Think of things like that in the kitchen that you need to dice or slice ahead of time, and make your life way easier. Put them into Ziploc containers and air-tight bags so that they can sit in your fridge for a few days ready to be cooked, and they can save you a whole bunch of time.

Certain vegetables I recommend buying in bulk, because you will get them cheaper and it will make your life way easier. Of course potatoes can last a whole winter time. That is why they are so prolific in a lot of cold countries. So they will last a long time. Onions will also last a few weeks in your refrigerator. You have other vegetables such as avocados which you can buy unripe and they can sit around for a couple weeks until they ripen up. You can buy apples ahead of time. You can buy sweet potatoes in bulk. You can buy so many vegetables like celery and hard vegetables ahead of time. Certain things like lettuces and herbs, you can only buy a small amount at a time because they go bad quickly. But think about the things that will last a while and buy them ahead of time: save you money and save you a lot of time at the grocery store.

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