How can one recreate the main workflow techniques used in a restaurant to serve quality food at home?

Question

I'm curious as to how a restaurant can serve a table with different dishes which take widely different times to cook - hot, fresh and simultaneously. I often want to do this at home, but often fail on the timings.

I'm assuming here that a lot of this will be compensated by "Hot holding", either in pans or by quickly blitzing food under a grill or boiler. There is also the number of staff involved, and as each chef will deal with a specialty dish, this will be a lot easier to coordinate than than with just one person in the kitchen.

So how can a home chef up their game and approach the same level of variety and quality, or is there a point where a commercial restaurant will always beat the home chef?

Answer 1

The fact that there are often different cooks working different stations makes the timing and completion of different dishes possible. You generally answered your own question... they are pros, and do what they do repeatedly, many times a night and many nights in a row. You probably can't recreate this at home. Everything is prepped in advance, when the order comes in the item is finished and plated, timing this among the cooks so that individual dishes are done together.

At home, many things can be streamlined with good prep work, a solid understanding of timing and cooking procedures, warm or cold plates, and patient guests. You are probably not serving different meals to individual guests, so "up your game" by serving a coursed meal where you can have the majority of the dish completed ahead of time, with just the finishing and plating to do before the same course is served to all of your guests. Enjoy with them, then head off to the kitchen for the next course...even better if the kitchen is in close proximity or they are dining in the same room!

Answer 2

Let me just address the timing aspect of this question, because I do this all the time for large guest dinners (Christmas eve, Passover, etc.). I'm going to give an example from my upcoming holiday dinner this weekend.

There's two stages to this:

1. Figure out which things can be made ahead and reheated or served cold. Restaurants do this constantly. For example, just about every dessert served in most restaurants was frozen when you sat down -- the dessert chef comes in and makes large batches once a week.

2. Figure out all of your timings and work backwards from when stuff has to be served. Spreadsheets help. Again, chefs and line cooks do this all the time; if a table orders the prime rib and the sole, one line cook will start the rib 20 minutes before the other one puts the sole on, so they'll be done at the same time.

The second part is simple to say, but hard to actually do, and realistically impossible for dishes you've never cooked before. Also beware of scaling up; I've found out the hard way a few times that making twice as much of something substantially and unpredictably affects the cooking time.

So, examples: this weekend I'm doing a multi-holiday dinner since we have the confluence of Easter, Passover, and Ramadan. Dinner will include:

• matzoh and two dips, halek and mizra ghasemi
• deviled eggs
• herb salad
• saffron matzoh ball soup
• caramel pots de creme

Both dips and the deviled eggs can and should be made ahead, so I'm making them the day before. I just need to remember to take them out of the fridge one hour before the guests arrive (6:30pm), to come up to room temp, so that goes on my schedule at 5:30pm. The pots de creme get made two days ahead, and don't come out of the fridge until 7:30, while people are eating the soup.

The matzoh ball soup has multiple stages, and takes a minimum of 2 hours, and that's assuming you do the stock-->soup and the matzoh ball making in parallel. I could make this easier by making the stock a day ahead, but I don't have room in my fridge (this is where restaurants can do things I can't). I don't want it to be ready until 7:30, though, because it's the 3rd course, which complicates things because that means I have guests arriving just at some critical stages, so I actually stretch out prep. So I prepare my timeline like this:

• 4:00 make matzoh ball dough, put in fridge
• 4:30 chop vegetables, start stock simmering
• 4:45 mince herbs for herb salad
• 5:00 form matzoh balls
• 5:30 put matzoh balls back into fridge; stock is done. Take apps out of fridge.
• 5:45 put soup ingredients into stock, put on simmer
• 6:00 dress herb salad
• 6:15 put seasoned water on medium
• 6:30 add balls to boiling seasoned water; soup is done, cover and turn off heat. Guests arrive.
• 6:45 serve dips and matzoh, plus eggs
• 7:15 serve herb salad
• 7:30 Soup & balls ready. Combine and serve as soon as guests are done with the salad.
• 8:30 serve dessert

So yeah, it's complicated, and unlike a restaurant it's made more complicated by the fact that you want to attend your own party (unlike restaurant staff, who will stay in the back). On the other hand, you're just preparing a tiny handful of dishes. Plus this is only a reasonable timeline because it's my 25th time making matzoh ball soup; if it were my first or 2nd time, I'd want to give myself another hour or more.

Answer 3

Prep. Write your menu so you don't forget anything. Make sure you have all ingredients or acceptable substitutes. Make a timetable for the day of so you won't have to stop and think of timing-this has saved me countless times. Yes, yes, I see the pun.

Slice, cube, shred, etc. the ingredients ahead of time. In a restaurant everything that can be made ahead, is. Cook reheatable foods ahead. Measure the ingredients and store separately combining and\or cooking them the day of.

Make sure to factor in enjoying yourself. Luck!!