Kitchen equipment for a general cafeteria

Kevin Venzke

Commissary style cooking is nothing like fast food, in fact it's not like any kind of restaurant... it's much more like home cooking only very high-tech sophisticated... and most everything is prepared from scratch, much moreso than is typically done at home. The equipment used is very different, not only that it's larger, it is actually totally different. Upon entering a commissary kitchen the first thing you'll wonder is where are all the stoves-cooktops... well, there aren't any, no pots or pans either... instead there're banks of huge steam jacketed kettles, ranging anywhere from 60 qt to 160 qt, capable of when filled to capacity with liquid bringing it to a rolling boil in perhaps six minutes. Instead of pans there are banks of oversized griddles, where someone running 4-5-6 at a time can easily prepare 300 portions of eggs-any-style w-homefries, burgers, steaks, grilled cheese, etc.... commissary style cooking is extremely fast... hundreds, thousands need to be fed within the same time period as feeding one. There are banks of high recovery-capacity deep fryers, many banks of oversized pizza parlor type ovens, banks of automatic slicing machines, many stand mixers that can handle 60, 100, 120 quarts, there are separate rooms just for preparing vegetables, containing highly specialized, high capacity vegetable prep machines, that can automatically pare, slice, dice, shred, etc. There are all sorts of high capacity specialized machines, such as automatic continuous bread slicers-toasters There'll be a separate bake shop too, perhaps a separate butcher shop also. And of course there'll be huge storage facilities, including many large walk-in fridges-freezers. Menus are prepared for a month at a time, everything operates efficiently and smoothly.

Sheldon