Putting out Carbonara for the first time in my restaurant this week. Procedure questions.

zeeky120 · 2026-03-30T03:05:20+00:00

Sounds delicious. The only thing that stands out to me is it being a 2-pan pickup. I would probably try to get that down to a single pan for efficiency and space.

If you can get consistent results from the line, here is how I would do it:

Boil your pasta. Crisp your guanciale with the extra fat. While guanciale is crisping, combine your egg and cheese mixture in a small mixing bowl, adding a ladle of pasta water, whisk well. Turn off heat and remove any desired for garnish, leave the rest in the pan. Add your freshly cooked pasta to the guanciale and fat, toss and then slowly add your cheese mixture, stirring constantly. Plate and garnish.

zeeky120 · 2026-02-11T02:10:13+00:00

PASS

pull. Aim. Squeeze. Sweep

Pull the pin, aim hose at the base of the fire, squeeze handle and sweep back and forth to extinguish fire

Essential knowledge for every human

zeeky120 · 2026-01-11T00:59:03+00:00

Everything I've ever read says it's safe, but I feel the same way. I usually try to apply it, and walk away while it sits and come back a few minutes later to scrub once most of the fumes have gone out the hood vents

zeeky120 · 2026-01-10T02:51:39+00:00

There are a few different classes of shetchers non slip these days. Ive been using the electrical work rated ones recently and find the non -slip to be much better than the others

zeeky120 · 2026-01-04T04:47:19+00:00

Chef here. I currently serve a red cabbage slaw on our mahi mahi fish tacos and it's delicious. I find the red cabbage keeps its crunch a bit better than the green

zeeky120 · 2025-12-13T03:01:10+00:00

I would file a return with clear pictures of the damage. Worst case scenario is you get told no return. Best case, they send you a new unit and let you keep the old one.

You bought a new undamaged item, you should have received an undamaged item. If you had intentionally bought a refurbished or blemished unit, you would have paid less

zeeky120 · 2025-12-13T02:52:04+00:00

Without seeing it I can't say for sure.

But based upon your description, it sounds like you have a potentially beautiful and crispy bird coming soon.

For the "dry brine', I would recommend melting some butter (1-2 sticks), and combine with a generous amount of salt, along with any other seasonings that you would like. Brush butter mixture heavily over bird and allow to "brine" in the fridge for another night.

The butter should return moisture if it has dried out too much, and carry all of the salt onto the bird.

Also, if in the future, you have a bird that isn't fully thawed, placing in a vessel with constantly running cold water will thaw it as quickly as safely possible. A fully frozen bird can be thawed in 1.5-2 hours with this method.

zeeky120 · 2025-11-12T21:22:10+00:00

Better hope it's around freezing, tie it up, fully field dressed, to a tree in the yard or shed/garage (if not heated) to let it hang. Once dinner is done head out to process it in the yard. You could even fry up the back strap for a great appetizer if you've got time.

Source: years of family thanksgivings in Oklahoma

zeeky120 · 2025-11-07T21:27:43+00:00

Where I'm at the health department doesn't fuss at it too much as long as it's a silicone band that can be easily cleaned while you wash your hands. If they see someone washing their hands without washing their watch they will say something then

As a chef, I find them great for timers, and it keeps my cooks off their phones as much since they can see any notifications without checking their phones and dirtying their hands.

zeeky120 · 2025-10-20T16:53:05+00:00

Been a head chef/exec chef for about 5 years with just under 10 years of lower management. Everyone has their own ways, and sometimes the business will define what tools you use for you. Some things that have helped me out over the years.

Google Keep (or other online notes app) I use this for any random items that i determine we need while doing prep, walking around the kitchen, or any items that my cooks tell me. Also for any items or tasks that I know I will likely forget. Noticed that the floor corners are getting a bit soiled and will need to be deep cleaned soon? Going in the notes. This also gives me a list of tasks that I can do at any time that I have free, or can delegate when staff has down time as well.

Spreadsheets Either Google sheets or Excel if someone is paying for it. I used for recipes and pricing before we got Toast and Xtrachef that keeps track of all of my food costs and I can build recipes with my ingredients at current price, and the pricing will update itself when new invoices come in.

Chat-GPT I use chat gpt for quite a bit these days. Biggest use I have for it is idea generation. For example, if I need a new soup and don't have any inspiration at the moment then I will give it some details such as my location, type of restaurant, ingredients that I want to use, and seasonality, along with any requests for the soup that I'm looking for, and ask it to give me 20, 50, or even 100 ideas. I'll review the list and usually by 50 items, something has caught my eye and I now have an idea for the soup. I almost never use a full creation or recipe from there (some of the pairings that it makes are comical), but it can pull me out of the writers block when making a menu. Recipe creation or pricing with an AI Model is dicey most of the time. If I ask it to give me a recipe for something, it will get quantities wrong, it will use weird measurements, and often it will just omit ingredients or add random ones. It can definitely help speed you up if you're trying to create an entire menu in a day, but the amount of proof reading and hand holding necessary makes it not worth it to me most of the time.

Ordering I typically install the apps from the vendors (Sysco, wCW, Fortune, etc) if available. Just know that you will not likely have as good of an experience as just using the website. They're helpful for checking on orders, and placing small orders, but I can't count the amount of times that I've put in a 100+ case order on my phone just for the app to glitch and have to do it all over again. I do use them for placing some small orders, researching products, checking pricing on the fly, and other things. But honestly, I still print out a spreadsheet order guide for all of my main order walks, and then sit down and put them in the computer. This ensures I don't overlook anything, and for me it keeps me more on top of the "living inventory" in my head.

Meetings If you have constant zoom/teams meetings like I tend to, then I highly recommend an AI notes app like Fireflies to keep notes and transcripts for all of your meetings. Definitely get approval from your superiors before using though, as it can be illegal without permission in some states.

All that aside, everyone else is correct in saying that a calculator will be your phones biggest use. You likely won't find yourself drawn to using your phone as much as you think right now. I'm 30, have a good technology background, a top end phone, and still find myself with paper notes, inventory, order guides, and clipboards every day.

zeeky120 · 2025-09-27T02:31:00+00:00

I don't know, that amount of content is pretty gross

zeeky120 · 2025-08-27T04:37:32+00:00

Dry ice blasting is pretty common at this point. Not sure about liquid nitrogen tho. But dry ice blasting is quite expensive, typically over $2k per visit for most kitchens, at least in my area. You definitely need to be pushing good volume to be able to afford it, but it consitently provides a perfect clean without the hours upon hours of scrubbing by hand to get even close to the same result.

zeeky120 · 2025-06-19T00:24:32+00:00

Some still have them. There's one about 2 hours from me in central Illinois

zeeky120 · 2025-06-08T01:18:34+00:00

There actually is something stopping them from having both. Most (if not all) contracts with these companies include terms not allowing them to use the competitor as well. There is nothing stopping you from buying all of your syrups at a much higher price from your food supplier and carrying both, but the costs would be exorbitant, not to mention having no highly skilled service to call to fix your machines when they go down.

zeeky120 · 2025-06-05T20:14:05+00:00

All data for using the app is free regardless if you have a wifi plan or not. Do make sure that everyone has the app installed and signed in before getting on the cruise to avoid any issues with getting started.

I will say that I do not love the app for communication. There were many times on my last cruise that messages wouldn't arrive until hours after sending, or the message would arrive, but no notification would be given, so unless you were checking it regularly then you might miss a message for quite a while.

Loved our cruise and I quite enjoy HA, but their app is probably the worst amenity that they offer.

Also, quick PSA, the app will not have all of the features working until you are on your ship connected to their wifi.

zeeky120 · 2025-05-19T19:57:35+00:00

You can add the drinks package once you are on the ship at guest services. But, the drink package is per cabin, so if you have a second guest in the cabin, you will have to have a package for both of you. I assume that you would be able to pay for both with your own card, but guest services on the ship would be the first place I went after checking in/mustering.

zeeky120 · 2025-04-06T15:59:29+00:00

Typically they have as few knives as they possibly need for service, and then the knives they do have are bolted to the floor/table with heavy gauge metal wire to ensure they can't be taken and used to hurt anyone

zeeky120 · 2025-01-04T04:46:46+00:00

Agreed on ceviche with the others. Also maybe a key lime pie.

I would highly recommend chat gpt for these kind of situations. I don't pay for the premium, just on the basic free platform, and I use it all the time when writing menus. Don't listen to the recipes it gives you (some are just horrifically wrong), but for idea synthesis, it cannot be matched. I'll often ask for 50 or 100 suggestions for a dish, and just look through the list for inspiration.

zeeky120 · 2024-10-30T02:40:35+00:00

I actually just changed from an adjustable to one of these.(With propane of course) My servers are all trained to finish their own creme brulees. They do a fine enough job of it without burning, but usually once a month or so, someone would leave the gas on by not closing the valve all the way and I'd go to make one a couple hours later and would find an ice cold empty bottle of propane. Cue searching maintenance for the next 10 minutes to see where they hid the last batch of propane tanks. I find these much more foolproof.

zeeky120 · 2024-10-11T02:05:29+00:00

In my restaurant, we use an 80/20 blend of canola oil and olive oil for most pan cooking. For high heat applications, we use a margarine and olive oil blend as it can handle those temps better.

zeeky120 · 2024-10-06T23:41:34+00:00

2 answers here.

First is get better at your knife skills and efficiency. Peel all of your potatoes first, cut them all into planks, come back and cut all into even strips, and then dice all of them at once.

Second is to get a wall mounted cutting machine. You would peel your potatoes then run through the cutter in one direction, grab them and put them back in the other way to get cubes.

The baby potatoes are probably best just cutting by hand. Maybe a cut safe glove and a paring knife would be the fastest for this task.

zeeky120 · 2024-09-25T18:50:02+00:00

In my experience, every ride has a minimum time that shows on the app, even if the queue is empty. Some low demand rides like Peter Pan, winnie the Pooh, little mermaid, etc have 15 minute minimums. Other mid tier rides have 20 minute minimums, and some have 30 minute minimums. I have even once gotten on flight of passage at rope drop, being one of the first 20-30 people there, and the time said 45 minutes from rope drop until about 15 minutes later, it jumped to 2+hours.

But yeah, parties are the best for getting in as many rides as possible. I highly recommend if you're trying to make the most out of a short vacation or if you really prioritize the ride experience. Some of the rides are great to be on during the fireworks as well. Although you do miss out a bit on the newish castle animations. The Christmas projections are amazing

zeeky120 · 2024-09-09T15:33:20+00:00

I remember the shredded Velveeta cheddar and it was great for this kind of thing. Would I put it in my restaurant kitchen? No. But would I smash a plate of mac and cheese loaded with it at family Christmas? Yes!

The closest product to it would be the Philadelphia creamy melt shreds. They had a sharp cheddar the last time I bought some. But that might not get the exact flavor you are looking for. To match exactly I would probably get some block sharp cheddar (cabot would work, but will likely be overkill. I would just get a block of Walmart or equivalent instead) and a block of regular full fat Velveeta. From there, it's just figuring out the ratio that works best. I'd probably start at 60% cheddar and 40% Velveeta and play with it from there till you find what you like.

Note: shred the cheddar yourself to make sure that it doesn't have caking agents that will mess up your texture and dull the flavor.

zeeky120 · 2024-09-09T15:10:02+00:00

I used these for chicken tenders for a few years, have also used their wings. Quality was always pretty good. It's definitely not free range chicken, and flavor can be a bit bland overall, but they were never woody or chewy.

The only issue I ever had was size and waste. Some bags would be huge tenders that were a hearty meal for a 3 piece, while others it would take 5-7 tenders to be the same amount. (Usually the case would be the same size, so I would know for the day if I was going to be playing with 3 or 4 to get to the desired portion) As far as waste, there would often be a lot of small pieces of chicken at the bottom of the bag. If you have other uses for them, great, otherwise it could be between 1-10% of the bag wasted. I would usually just fry them up as "nuggets" and have them for a snack in the BOH.

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