FESmag

Amelia Levin

Turn It...Off
October 2, 2008

Sharpen your knives often, taste everything, and turn all the ovens on when you walk in the kitchen. Those are just a few of the standard operational steps all chefs learn, regardless of what segment of the foodservice industry they serve. But just because it’s something everyone’s taught, does not necessarily make it universally the right step to take in today’s business climate, particularly if we want to operate in a more environmentally friendly and efficiently way.

For example, in the first day of my advanced sauces class this term at Kendall College, one of the first things the Chef made sure of was that we turned on all of the ovens in the kitchen.  Even after instructing a designated “sous chef” for the day to turn on the ovens, Chef walked around the kitchen ensuring this vital first step was taken as we  prepared our mise en place . There were only seven people in the class that day, and we were paired up to share one oven per team. Yet, the Chef turned on all 10 ovens.Ultimately, we only used two of the ovens in order to roast the bones for the stocks we were focused on making that day. 

This doesn’t make the Chef a bad person or anti-“green.” No. 1, some of the ovens in this particular kitchen don’t always work, so it’s good to have a backup. But more poignantly, turning on all the ovens, by traditional standards, makes my instructor a good chef.

Last week at the FCSI Super Regional conference in Toronto, Canada, Chris Koetke, dean of culinary arts at Kendall, brought up this concern as part of a larger discussion about the school’s sustainability programs.

“What is the first thing a chef does when he walks into the kitchen?” Koetke rhetorically asked the crowd, which consisted of about 75 industry members, including consultants, manufacturers and other allied members. “Turn all the ovens on. We’re slowly trying to change this philosophy.”

Like your mother or father taught you to turn the lights off when you’re leaving a room, keeping all the ovens up and running when some or many of them will go unused is clearly a waste of energy and a drain on a foodservice operation’s cash. Further complicating things, many kitchens require all the lights to be turned on, too. That’s because many are positioned in such a way that little or no natural light can enter the space, so, they’re dark. Fortunately, for Kendall, the lower-level kitchens have windows that help bring in this light, but in the kitchen where my advanced sauces class meets there aren’t any. Basically, this kitchen is a real energy-drain.

At the same time, from a cooking perspective, when you need an oven at the proper temperature, you need it … now. Lost time means lost dollars in many foodservice kitchens. 

This just goes to show that “going green” is not always easy, but it can be done with some compromises, in the form of thinking ahead and questioning why you plan to do something. For example, manufacturers could continue to focus on building ovens that heat up quicker, and have better heat-recovery times. When you’re stuck with older ovens, though, as we are in my class’ case, it’s sort of a toss-up. 

And, of course, these operational improvements in efficiency only work better when a kitchen is designed well. In larger kitchens, designating a shared oven or space for warming plates and last-minute reheating could take the place of multiple ovens running, unnecessarily, at the same time. 
On my own terms, for now, I’ll just pay closer attention to the dishes we’ll be making ahead of time in class in order to anticipate whether we’ll need an oven.

Posted by Amelia Levin on October 2, 2008 | Comments (0)