#cooks posts

[officercooks]

Got a new pen today so I dropped everything I was doing to try it out

#ninjago #ninjago fanart #ninjago dragons rising #cole brookstone #ninjago cole #ninjago fritz #ninjago geo #ninjago bonzle #ninjago spitz #lego ninjago #lego ninjago fanart #ninjago art #art #cooks art #cooks posts #the finders

[weaselle]

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

#long post #sorry #i just have a lot of DO PEOPLE UNDERSTAND feelings left over from all my years in restaurants #restaurants #line cook #service industry

[highladyluck]

The Dungeon Meshi renaissance is making me want to share the resources that taught me how to cook.

Don’t forget, you can check out cookbooks from the library!

Smitten Kitchen: The rare recipe blog where the blog part is genuinely good & engaging, but more important: this is a home cook who writes for home cooks. If Deb recommends you do something with an extra step, it’s because it’s worth it. Her recipes are reliable & have descriptive instructions that walk you through processes. Her three cookbooks are mostly recipes not already on the site, & there are treasures in each of them.

Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden: This is a great guide to seasonal produce & vegetable-forward cooking, and in addition to introducing me to new-to-me vegetables (and how to select them) it quietly taught me a number of things like ‘how to make a tasty and interesting puréed soup of any root veggie’ and ‘how to make grain salads’ and ‘how to make condiments’.

Grains for Every Season: Rethinking Our Way With Grains by Joshua McFadden: in addition to infodumping in grains, this codifies some of the formulas I picked up unconsciously just by cooking a lot from the previous book. I get a lot of mileage out of the grain bowl mix-and-match formulas (he’s not lying, you can do a citrus vinaigrette and a ranch dressing dupe made with yogurt, onion powder, and garlic powder IN THE SAME DISH and it’s great.)

SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT by Samin Nosrat: An education in cooking theory & specific techniques. I came to it late but I think it would be a good intro book for people who like to front-load on theory. It taught me how to roast a whole chicken and now I can just, like, do that.

I Dream Of Dinner (so you don’t have to) by Ali Slagle: Ok, look, an important part of learning to cook & cooking regularly is getting kinda burned out and just wanting someone else to tell you what to make. These dinners work well as written and are also great tweakable bases you can use as a starting place.

If you have books or other resources that taught you to cook or that you find indispensable, add ‘em on a reblog.

#cooking #food #cooking resources #cooking reference post

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

#this is true #writeblr #warm up #relatedly for some reason one of our Favorite Jokes #amongst the Siblings #is like - ''this is so good u will love it'' #while we are reacting to something we OBVIOUSLY find viscerally disgusting #like we will be actively retching and be like ''nooooo it's so good'' #to the point that i sometimes get nervous if someone outside my family is like oh u should try it its good #(obvi we never force each other to eat anything. we are all just curious birds and #like. we're GONNA try the new thing.) #edit to answer why we had so much vanilla: #my mom is a very good cook and we LOVE to bake. so she just had a lot of staples in the house. #it's one of those things that's like. have u ever continuously thought ''ah i should get butter im probably out'' #even tho u are not out of butter. so u end up with like 5 years of butter. #my mom would do that in a costco but like with vanilla extract #to be fair we WERE always using WAY TOO MUCH bc we were kids #so like she was right to stock up #ps. yes we were VERY sick after this lol i just didn't want to include it in the post in case ppl had an ick about that #u can tell it's real bc we knew "oh no we fucked up that's too much vanilla to waste'' but our reaction was to just. keep drinking it #> sibling understanding that vanilla extract isn't free > knowledge mother doesnt mind if we use it for milkshakes #> sibling choice to maybe get in a loophole of ''not wasting it'' if we drink it bc that's the same as using it (not throwing it out) #listen bud i was like 13 and my sister was like 9 #when my mom discovered this we. got in. A LOT. of trouble. a lot of it. a LOT of it. #3rd edit bc i guess it isn't clear - i am 1 of my brother's 2 little sisters #i am the middle child #out of all the ways i have had to explain a post before being like ''did u forget a middle child can happen'' is my favorite

[stabberghost]

#first tadc post here heaaayyy #I'll have some art out soon dont worry im cooking #scheduled post #the amazing digital circus #tadc pomni #tadc caine #tadc ragatha #tadc jax #gooseworx #shitpost

[marisatomay]

#be gentle with the site…let it cook especially if you’ve been on here for along time #if it takes too long you can always restart it #saw a poll about tumblr fame where the metric was follower count but since follower count is private the real metric we use on here is #how much interaction do your original posts receive #anyway! have at it! #also if you wanted to take the final Total Notes number and divide it by Posts Counted for your Avg Notes Per Post I would appreciate that #like when I divide my Total Notes by my Posts Counted I average 644 notes per original post allegedly

[maiko-coy]

I don't see any angry, vengeful Dogday in the ppt community so I'll provide for myself beCAUSE IM STARVING FOR THIS, HE DESERVES TO BE ANGRY-- ahem. Anyway, heres an AU where after there is still fire in Dogdays eyes and him being saved fueled the fire and now he wants to keep fighting.

#poppy playtime #poppy playtime chapter 3 #Dogday #smiling critters #poppy playtime au #AU where Dogday absolutely loathes Catnap for what he did And what he did to the others #Dw we'll get catnap later #But for now have an angry dogday that demands justice #hes still nice tho #Im thinking on calling it Second Chance AU but who knows-- #There will be a pre-canon part and a post-canon part in this AU #Yall im cooking #Let me cook

[favoure]

"do the opposite of what people tell you to do"

#desert duo #grian #goodtimeswithscar #secret life #mcyt #trafficblr #favourarts #ok to tag as ship #so i posted this to twitter first right #and the amount of people i have in my replies saying that they'll kill themselves is honestly Very funny #anyways im back :)) #i missed drawing these two GOD #okay life update in the tags for this piece is: something about finals season just makes you want to draw more #<- has been saying this for 4 days straight now #YAAAAAAYYYY i got another desert duo sketch cooking fellas and this one is a Bit more self indulgent if yk what i mean hehe #<- SEE U IN THE SIDEBLOG

[taikova]

*destroys sanji with my mind*

#one piece #sanji #op fanart #i do love him and all the straw hats #wip #lineart #sketchbook #taiart #if you show me a picture of sanji from wholecake arc i will cry #if you show me a picture of sanji post timeskip nearly anywhere else i may kick him #cooking #cartoon food #traditional #traditional art

[captainkirkk]

I want to see characters being taken care of in an explicit and worshipful way. Home-cooked meals. Hair brushed and braided by gentle hands. Little gifts just because.

I want to read about characters who are not used to kindness being bombarded by acts of service. This trope works romantically and platonically. Give me found family and acts of service - all the ways a character is wrapped up in wordless, explicit care after years of cruelty and having no idea how to handle. I need it.

#fanfiction #this is the 'comfort' part of hurt/comfort #but i want to take it to the extreme honestly #not just comfort immediately after a traumatic event #but consonant daily comfort! #being taken care of because you are loved always and unconditionally #this is the real reason why i sometimes read sugar daddy AUs even though i don't like them #i want to read about characters being SPOILED #this is also why i love the mdzs love interests so much #luo binghe is the ultimate worshipful house husband and i love that #my posts #you can tell i'm irrationally tired when i start getting tear-eyed over someone being cooked a meal

[officercooks]

My entry for @nokkomo's DTIYS! Congrats on 200 flowers!!

I really enjoyed doing this, also I had to include the lilies of course

#nokko200dtiys #ninjago #ninjago fanart #cole brookstone #ninjago cole #lego ninjago #lego ninjago fanart #cole ninjago #cooks posts #cooks art #art #ninjago art

[bigfatbreak]

How does nooroo feel about Tom in your villian dad au?

After initial introductions, Tom basically thinks Nooroo is a figment of his imagination and a testament to his mind crumbling from the grief of losing Sabine. Nooroo gets an inside look on what really matters to tom, though

Tom uses the butterfly miraculous not for himself, but for the benefit of his daughter. The vengeance he's trying to take on "Hawkmoth" isn't quite as simple as "you're responsible for the death of my wife," it stems from a very, very different source - which makes Nooroo more sympathetic to helping him.

He's still not thrilled, but, Marinette and Tom are so kind to him, he really can't find it in himself to complain.

#replies #dad villain au #my art #nooroo #tom dupain cheng #marinette dupain cheng #marinette is all busted up because she's still very clumsy #and keeps hurting herself while cooking #she's also massively sleep deprived #because when she sleeps she dreams of her mom and it makes waking up a cruel joke she cant handle most nights #so as a result she's overworked. sleep deprived. stressed. physically banged up. and also dropped out of school due to bullying #long post

[asteraws]

my clown college grad project from december last year 🎪

#my art #oc #illustration #ok to elaborate a bit #its more of a circus/performing arts school but clown college is just easier and sillier to say so #i call it that #what da hell do i tag JFLDSKSFKD #im archiving a lot of stuff these days... #post uni burnout has been so real guys lol ill be taking a break from this proj but def wanna come back to it some day :3 #IN THE MEAN TIME THO... im finally cooking up another oc story omggg im saur excited abt it hopefully i can share some art of it here soon

[lieutenant-sarcastic]

#this will settle it! this will settle the private conversation between two people who barely cook !!!! #weve said stove so many times that it ceases to look and sound like a word #i grew up with electric stoves like #yeah they WORK differently but cooking on the stove is cooking on the stove #ur not special or better than me bc u have a gas stove 😌 #i hope ur gas leaks and morgan freeman has to shooy u thru a pint of milk 😌 /jk #up to something #polls #edit: *Mickey mouse voice* ha ha! I’ve made a mistake! #This post was not supposed to escape !!!!!! Fuck !! #my brother: lol is this about the political shit that happened a few months ago? me: THE WHAT??????

[glo-shroom]

yes & no by Natalie Wee | Trigun Ultimate Overhaul

#THIS HAS BEEN COOKING. FOR TWO MONTHS #trigun #vashwood #vash the stampede #nicholas d. wolfwood #vash #wolfwood #trigun maximum #mine #edit #trimax #trigun edit #tw suicide mention #for that one line #and #tw blood #hopefully there's nothing else I'm forgetting #long post #i guess #pls feel free to critique me on the alt texts I've never done it before and would love to know what I can do better #but uhhh yeah otherwise. enjoy my baby. I'm very proud of this #I do however need to not look at it for a while now #so aside from the IDs if there are mistakes. no there aren't <3 #AND THANKS TO MY QPP EEE FOR LISTENING TO ME ENDLESSLY WORK ON THIS AND OFFERING ME INPUT AND CRITIGUE!!! <3333 #god. it's finally done #edit: btw I could write so much on my choices in this and what I'm going for and little details. but I leave it to the masses to interpret

[suiheisen]

you think YOU had a bad day at work?

bonus: sid shrieking "no!!!! NO!!!!!" loud enough to be heard in the stands and on camera

#this is now my FAVOURITE game i've watched in real life knocking the game misconduct one off the number one rank #he was so annoyed the entire game and so annoying about it :') #he kept shrieking away on the bench and i couldn't hear a word from where i was seated #but you could just hear this constant yipping away dhfsgfkjshgfsjf PLEASE it was so funny your 36-year-old babygirl was BARKING #drew kept sitting there like... is mom okay... i don't think mom's okay... #also extremely good for me (since he wasn't really hurt) was the whumpfest of it all oh my god what ancient gods did he anger......... #geno kept Hovering in concern #po kept giving him little shoulder pats the way a sweet brave babyboy would try his best to soothe a rabid little dog #ek of course kept trying to slide right inside him and also kept skating up to him and STARING him in the face in concern/lust/both #also guys this is my first time in canada ever!!!!!!!! i'm excited #anyway. very good game for me sorry for this post but you know i love a #long post #sidney crosby #evgeni malkin #pittsburgh penguins #also!!! to all who celebrate #ramadan kareem/eid mubarak #<333 staying with a friend here through the eid celebration and they've been cooking and everything smells so good