To serve several dishes hot at the same time, do not cook them all at once; schedule their finish times around when the meal will be served. Start the dish with the longest cooking time first. Meat and rice that need to rest leave time for other tasks while they rest, and last-minute tasks are not all piled onto one burner. Keep dishes that need to wait hot, at 60°C / 140°F or above, in the oven or in a covered pot, and warm the plates too.
The main tool is a backward schedule. Write down the serving time, then count backward from it using each dish’s cooking and resting time to find when to start. That way, a roast that cooks for a long time in the oven starts early, rice starts closer to mealtime, and fried food starts last. Starting everything at once is the most common mistake: a quick-cooking dish finishes early and cools or dries out while it waits. The goal is for each dish’s ready time to fall as close as possible to the serving time. Take each dish’s cooking time from its recipe and add it to the schedule one by one.
Dishes that need to rest create a gap in the schedule, and you can use that gap. Let meat from the oven rest before cutting it; while it rests, the oven is free for another dish. After removing rice from the stove, let it rest with the lid on; meanwhile, the burner is free to finish a sauce or vegetables. Resting time is not wasted time; it is the most productive part of the schedule. Keep resting food covered so it retains its heat; do not cut or stir it during this time, because every exposed surface loses heat.
Do not pile last-minute tasks onto one burner or into a single time slot. If fried food, a skillet dish, and a sauce are all cooking on the stove at once, none gets the attention it needs and one may burn. So when planning the menu, distribute dishes by where they cook: one in the oven, one on the stove, and one prepared ahead and served cold. If two dishes will share the oven, their temperatures and cooking times must be compatible; if they are not, cook them in sequence and keep the first dish warm after it comes out. On the stove, put dishes that cook for a long time on the back burners and those that need attention in front.
Plan ahead for keeping a dish warm while it waits. Keep saucy dishes in a covered pot over low heat or in a covered dish in an oven set to a low temperature; keep fried foods uncovered on a wire rack so steam does not soften the crust. Keeping food warm is not a cooking method; it only carries the dish through until serving time. How hot the food must stay and for how long is the subject of a separate tip. If the wait will be long, do not keep the food warm; change the schedule and cook it closer to mealtime.
The last step is serving, which also causes heat loss. Hot food placed on a cold plate transfers its heat to the plate and cools quickly. So warm the dinner plates before serving: place oven-safe plates in the turned-off oven to use its residual heat, or warm them with hot water and dry them. Prepare serving dishes the same way. Transfer food to plates and serving dishes at the last moment, and send the hot food out first; the cold dishes are already on the table, so no one has to wait to sit down.
Comments (1)
Ters takvim fikri sofra düzenimi değiştirdi, sofra saatinden geriye doğru yazınca hangi yemeğin ne zaman başlayacağı kendiliğinden çıkıyor.