Cooking Hacks: Rapid Cooler Defrost

One of the most fun aspects of being a chef: it's a Decathalon.

Cook. Manage. Create. Repair. Solve. Improve. Train (retrain!) Pay. Receive. Organize.

In order to succeed, you need to at least be able to cross the finish line in every one of these categories (whether or not you are the Best at them all.)

This post deals with the category of experience: Solving Problems You Are Not Trained To Solve at times when solving them is essential. Picture this: Restaurant chef stripping off white uniform coat with blue piping on the cuffs to shimmy into a dark, dusty corner and wrench a piece of broken equipment back to life until service is over. That's what we call "Living the Dream." (Culinary students take heed!)

A Big Slab of Trouble

It's Saturday evening, and I'm checking over the many coolers and freezers before checking out for a day of rest.

Cooks Should Never: Hotwire Pasta Machines

Fried!

Let's say, hypothetically, that you were operating a newly-purchased, beautiful expensive Italian pasta maker/extruder and it suddenly stopped functioning.  And you traced the problem to a blown fuse, which no one in the greater Metro area can find. And say the machine was still full of dense semolina dough that was threatening to become cemented permanently inside the interstices of the extruder's delicate parts unless something could be done to disassemble the machine.  And imagine that the special Italian wrench for removing the parts in peril was NOT included with the machine by the seller for the simple reason that the parts can be easily loosened by running the machine backwards for 10 seconds. . . except of course it won't run AT ALL.  Time is passing as you and your boss make phone calls to every single electrical supply house within 50 miles and they all say "What size is the fuse? Really? We could order it for you. . . be about 10 days."

Cooks Should Never: Deep Fry In the Pouring Rain

Pridefest, St Louis 2013.  

You know what happens when a drop of water or two accidentally gets into a pot of hot oil?

Spit, sizzle splat.  Maybe you get a little freckling of burns on your forearm from the leaping droplets.

Now let's say you have 50 hungry guests waiting in line for Loaded Fries with Pulled Pork, Aged Cheddar and Barbeque Sauce, and you already have 20# of fries immersed and roaring in gallons of hot oil, and it starts to pour down rain? Of course the fryers can't be under the tent for safety reasons, so they aren't.  The patrons are hungry, wet and cold.  Would you call off the show, shut down and turn them away?  

Hell no, me hearties! Batten down the sheet pans, roll down those sleeves and fry on! FRY ON I SAY!

No one was harmed, and we learned that a French fry remains crispy under the surface of the oil even if the oil is being rained into. Not recommended, but it worked this time.