Tablecraft color-coded Grippy Cutting Boards. Photo courtesy of Tablecraft.

There are a lot of food and festivities that occur during the holidays and it’s helpful to be prepared in the kitchen and around your establishment.   Here’s a list of 10 essential items to help you avoid last minute scrambles and make the holidays a success!

Cutting Boards:  When we think of the holidays, one of the things that comes to mind is holiday parties and lots of food.  Whether you’re preparing a bigger meal for larger groups or serving up plenty of tasty appetizers, you’ll have a lot of chopping to do and cutting boards are a necessity.  A set of color coded cutting boards, like Tablecraft’s grippy cutting board kits, make it easy to keep vegetables and meats separated.

Chef Knife:  A good chef knife will go a long way year round.  During the holidays it’s a workhorse for big feasts and cooking for lots of people.  It will help you chop, slice, and dice just about anything you need it to and provide you with an easier cooking experience all around.

Portable Burners:  These are ideal for catering all those holiday parties and for cooking on site to make a more festive occasion.  Vollrath’s Mirage® induction ranges are a precise and durable option, with two different models to fit your needs.

Chafing Dishes:  From holiday feasts to catered events, these pans make serving large quantities of food a breeze.  Many prefer a stainless steel option since they are not only durable, but elegant as well.  They add both style and function to the room.

Mixing Bowls:  Mixing bowls are essential because they are needed for so many different things—for mixing up a side, a dressing, baked goods and much more.  Having a few stainless steel bowls in a few different sizes is great since they hold up well to the constant use.

Sheet Pans:  A necessity for baking plenty of holiday goods! The holidays just wouldn’t be the same without an assortment of treats and sheet pans will be your best friend when baking.  Make sure you have enough so that you can prep for the next round while others are in the oven.

Decorating Tips and Pastry Tubes:  Impress guests with beautiful presentations.  With all of the treats around the holidays, you’ll have plenty that will need to be filled, piped, and decorated.  August Thomsen/ Ateco offers great selection in size and style of pastry bags and tips to match your decorating plan.  Canvas pastry bags are great for thicker products in which more applied pressure is necessary to squeeze it out, since they are more durable.  Plastic coated works well with oily or warm products since the plastic acts as a barrier to stop it from soaking through.        

Photo courtesy of Libbey.

Candles:  Ambiance is important and the soft lighting of candles provides the warm and cozy feel of Christmas.  Candles are an inexpensive way to create an atmosphere that invites guests to stick around longer.

Champagne Flutes:  Everyone is in a celebratory mood during the holidays.  You’ll want to be passing out the champagne in these glasses to keep the toasts coming and the good times rolling.  Depending on the environment of your establishment, disposable flutes can be an easy option for these types of events.

Anti-icing Agent:  Don’t let the frightful weather stop business from coming through your doors.  If you’re in an area that gets snowy weather, making your entrance accessible and safe is essential.  Quest Specialty Liquefire is a non-toxic anti-icing agent that melts snow and ice and prevents it from bonding to surfaces.  It’s a great non-corrosive alternative to rock salt.

How many of these essentials are you stocked up on already?  What other items can you not make it through the holidays without?

The post 10 Essential Food Service Smallwares for the Holiday Season appeared first on Houston's Blog.

Foodservice Equipment and Supplies magazine mentions, in their NAFEM guide, that the trends for purchasing equipment for your restaurant’s kitchen are changing.  Where in the past the relics of the kitchen were kept hidden from customer view, now “exhibition cooking” is becoming part of the front-of-the-house show.  That said, there is also “less tolerance…for having people work in crappy kitchen environments,” according to Certified Master Chef Brad Barnes of the Culinary Institute of America in New York.  The atmosphere of the kitchen can also set the tone for the whole of the restaurant, and creativity is sparked when the working conditions are optimal.  While equipment is getting “sexier” though, so too is it getting smaller.  With a focus on maximizing the front-of-the-house seating area, where the money is made, the back-of-the-house is downsizing by purchasing items that serve multiple purposes, or by acquiring such machinery as smaller ovens, which do the job equally as well as their larger counterpart but actually wind up with the double benefit of being more energy efficient.

Whether you are in the market for new equipment for a grand opening or are interested in replacing what you already have, the most important part of purchasing is to do your homework first.   If you are purchasing cooking equipment, determine how the unit will be used.  How much space do you need in order to accommodate the amount of traffic coming through your restaurant?  How many burners will you need on your induction cooktop?  How many chickens will you need to cook at a single time on your rotisserie?  For food prep equipment, food types will help you to determine what you will need to buy to meet your needs.  If you are purchasing a food processor, necessary horsepower is based on the type of food you will be processing, but bowl size is ultimately decided by the volume of customers you will serve in a day.  Slicer blade sizes are dependent on the dimensions of the foods you will be cutting, and the material of the slicer rests on the type of foods to be cut.  Stainless steel is the best bet for cutting tomatoes, for example, because the acids don’t react with the metal as they would with aluminum wares.  And always take into consideration the cost for replacement parts when shopping for your food prep equipment.

Tabletop and smallwares are other purchases to consider and while their cost is imminently smaller than that of large equipment, the “turnover” rate is greater.  Cooking utensils should be NSF listed, since this assures the piece is easy to clean and safe for contact with food.  Beyond that, what will the utensil be used for?  Is it compatible with the equipment it will be used with?  A $10 tool is no great deal if it ruins your $75 saute pan…  When choosing glassware, durability is key!  With so many choices available to restaurant owners, style is rarely compromised.  You do, however, need to remember that glassware does break, and that breakage needs to be taken into account when determining final numbers for purchase.

No purchase is too big or too small to study up on before taking the leap.  And NAFEM is a great place to learn about industry trends and products that are available.  For your brand new kitchen or as replacement pieces for your existing operation, make sure you do your homework and then choose what will work best for you.

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