The Commercial Kitchen Blog

At our site you will find the hugest variety of high quality commercial espresso machines for the best prices. Check us out now.

Buy Weber gas grill

 Buy Weber gas grill on the best site online for the best price - Amazon.com

Buy cheap weber gas grill

Buy cheap weber gas grill on the best site online for the best price - Amazon.com

Here is a great article about cast iron cookware i came across lately, hope you’ll like it

Cast Iron Cookware
By Tania Penwell

If, during a spring-cleaning spree, you come across an old cast iron griddle that belonged to your mother or grandmother, please don’t throw it away. As long as it has no cracks or nicks, you can clean it, and the effort will be worthwhile. Trust us, cast iron is top-grade cookware material because, not only does it heat evenly and consistently, cast iron is cheap and will last a lifetime with proper care. We will look at the care aspect a little later, but first, why cast iron cookware?

• It is the old-fashioned way to cook fat free. A well-seasoned cast iron pan is stick-resistant and requires no additional oil. Food will slide out of it as easily as from a non-stick pan
• It goes from stove to oven with equal ease.
• It does not warp
• It is incredibly easy to clean
• Its heat retention qualities allow for precise control of cooking temperatures

Where to Buy

Cast iron cookware is available for sale on the Internet, at cookery stores everywhere, economy stores, flea markets, tag and yard sales, the lot. If a cast iron pan is rusty or grease-coated, you can still buy it. Not only will you enjoy a lifetime of fat-free cooking, you can pass the pan on to your children and grandchildren.

A Myth Busted

Most people will tell you that they do not like cast iron cookware because everything they cook sticks. Well, if food sticks to your cast iron pan, it has not been seasoned properly and needs re-seasoning. As we mentioned earlier, cast iron is a natural non-stick surface and if your pan is seasoned correctly food will not stick to the surface at any cost.

Buying Guide

Skillet/ Frying Pan: When buying a cast iron skillet griddle or pan, choose the size most comfortable for you. Most people feel the 10-inch skillet is the easiest to handle.

Griddle: If you possess one of these, you will soon become renowned for your pancakes and crispy French toast. Cast iron griddles work very well on electric or gas ranges, but they are equally handy over a campfire.

Dutch Oven: Cast iron Dutch ovens have been used for hundreds of years. Perhaps no cookware material maintains a good, even temperature better than the heavy metal of this pot, and you can set it on stovetop or oven without a second thought.

Usage

• Preheat your skillet before you begin cooking. Water droplets should sizzle and then vaporize from the heated surface. If the water vaporizes immediately, the pan is too hot. If water only bubbles in the pan, it is not hot enough.
• DO NOT pour large amounts of cold liquid into your hot skillet. This can cause the cast iron to crack.
• Don’t forget to use potholders. Cast iron cookware gets extremely hot when heated.
• All new cast iron pots and skillets have a protective coating on them, which you must remove. Most American companies use a special food-safe wax, while imports are coated with shellac. In either case, scrub the cast iron cookware with a scouring pad, using soap and hot tap water.
• Never boil water in cast iron cookware because the hot water will remove small bits of oil from the surface, which you can see floating around. This causes the seasoning (explained later) to break down and the cast iron cookware to rust.

Maintenance

• The most important part of maintaining cast iron cookware is ’seasoning’ or ‘curing’. Your food will never stick to the surface and the cast iron will not rust if it is properly seasoned. Besides, it becomes easy to clean as well.
• Seasoning means filling the pores in the metal with grease, which is subsequently cooked in. This provides a smooth, nonstick surface on both the inside and outside. The best way to do this is to lightly oil the inside of a pan with neutral cooking oil while the pan is still hot and on the burner. Then, remove from the burner and lightly wipe the excess oil off the pan.
• If the cast iron cookware is not seasoned properly or part of the seasoning wears off, it should be properly cleaned and re-seasoned.
• It is best to clean while it is still hot using warm water and soap, and scraping when necessary. However, do not soak or leave soapy water in cast iron cookware. Rinse thoroughly and dry well with a dishcloth. To make sure the cookware is completely dry, place it on the heated burner of your stove for a minute or two.
• Store with the lids off, especially in humid weather, because if covered, moisture can build up and cause the cookware to rust.
• In any case, place a few paper towels inside a pan/skillet to make sure that any moisture will be absorbed. Dryness is of paramount importance.
• If your food gets a metallic taste, or turns dark, it either means that your pan has not been well seasoned, or you are leaving food in it well after it is cooked. So, do not store food (particularly acidic food) in cast iron cookware, as the acid in the food will break down the seasoning.
• If your old or new cast iron cookware displays light rust spots, scour the rusty areas with steel wool, until all traces of rust are gone. Wash, dry, and re-season.

Important: If too much oil or shortening is applied to a pan in the seasoning process, it will gum up when the pan is heated. In this case, the grease can be scraped off and some more grease rubbed over the spot, or the pan can be re-scrubbed and re-seasoned.

Tania Penwell provides information on cast iron cookware and other kinds of cookware for A1 Market - the site for the savvy shopper.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tania_Penwell
http://EzineArticles.com/?Cast-Iron-Cookware&id=872054

AbsoluteHome is giving away a nice coupon and i think that if you’re about to buy something big for the kitchen then you should check it out- $100 off order of $1000 or more – just enter code AHFEB07AF at Checkout

Thats 10% off if you’re buying something that costs $1000

When you are in the kitchen business you are always looking for great deals that can save you money since our line of business isn’t one of the most profitable businesses out there.

So when I stumbled upon Designer Plumbing Outlet I knew I’d make a blog post out of it. It doesn’t matter if you need to replace some faucets in your big kitchen or if you are redecorating small kitchen. You must check out their faucets – especially the Kholer faucets which I personally like.

 
Kohler faucet k-169-bn is my personal choice but I would love to hear your opinions and about your favourite faucets.

If you are searching for marble cutting boards - here are 3 online stores to check before you buy your own marble cutting board:

1. Marble cutting board on Amazon

2.  Marble cutting board on KlinQ.com

3. Marble cutting board on Kitchen Collection

If you know more places - please let us all know and leave a comment below…

If you are looking for some cheap Cambro pans then you can find some good deals on Instawares.com just search the site for “Cambro Pans” and you’ll see a large variety of Cambro pans for a really good price.

 For example:

 A Camwear Black 1/3 Size Food Pan - 6” Deep cost only $7.05

A Cambro 1/4 Size Clear Food Pan - 4” Deep cost only $6.13

And many more cheap Cambro pans on Instawares.com

A friend asked for my opinion on Krups Belgian waffle maker – so I thought why not make it a post? She told me that the Kitchenaid one is out of her price range (too bad – Kitchenaid is one of my favourites).

The Krups Belgian waffle maker is pretty good: It allows you to make rectangular waffles if you like them better than the round ones, it can last you a long time and the plates come out for cleaning which is great if you are the one that needs to clean it in the end.

I told her that there are other waffle makers that she can check out: the Waring Pro is pretty good and it beeps when your waffles are ready (but I m not sure if the plates come out to cleaning, but it doesn’t get so dirty anyway if you put a bit of oil to begin with) and the Presto Flipside Waffle maker which is also a good waffle maker.

Feel free to write from your experience.

5  Major things to relate to before you decide to get yourself a commercial kitchen:

1. The size of your commercial kitchen – Do you know how many people are you preparing to feed daily? 1,000? 5,000? 20,000? The answer will be the most important element in determining the size of the kitchen that you need.
   
   

2. Getting Your Permit – Before you start even planning your commercial kitchen make sure that you are aware of all the permits you need in order to operate a kitchen in your area. Make sure you know all the different requirements including but not limited to: food safety, electricity, plumbing, insurance (mostly fire and injuries), hygiene, air conditioning, waste treatment, kitchen lightning, building inspection (cabinets, ovens, sinks etc) and many more.
   Remember – you are building your kitchen for the permits as you are building it for you business.
   

3. Storage – Storage will take a big portion of your commercial kitchen: vegetable storage, cleaning materials storage, frozen food storage, cooked food storage, cookware storage etc.
   
   

4. Coolers & Freezers – As you’ll soon learn, if you don’t know it already – every type of food (vegetables, fish, meat, eggs etc) and every step in the manufacturing process (frozen food, raw food, semi cooked food, cooked food) needs its own cooling and freezing solutions.
   If you are planning to produce only one type of food or only frozen food for example – that will influence your kitchens plan.

5. Departments – According to the variety of food that you are going to produce you’ll need to build the appropriate departments (in a future post I will specify what each department needs):
   - Salads & Vegetables processing department
   - The cooking department
   - Stuffed food department (mushrooms, peppers, cabbage etc.)
   - Meat processing department
   - Fish processing department
   - Packing & delivery department
   - Waste treatment & cleaning department

 
A commercial kitchen isn’t an easy business but if it runs in your blood then you’ll overcome all the obstacles and you’ll run a commercial kitchen that you can be proud of!