105 - How to Read Tickets

So this week, what we're going to be talking about is how to read tickets, it's really important that when you're working on the line, and you got these tickets coming in, that you're able to read them accurately, and that you're able to organize yourself, so that all of the dishes that you have show up into the window at the same time. And so that you're not waiting, like a dish isn't waiting and deteriorating the quality while you're finishing another thing, okay? So the whole point is, is that that full ticket shows up in the window at the exact same time, or within, you know, a couple of seconds of of everybody else that's on the line. So the first thing you need to do, whenever you get a ticket, you need to read through it really quickly, just do a quick scan, look at several different factors, the first factor is what's going to take the longest to prepare, what is the thing that is going to take up the most of your time, either in the preparation aspect of it, or in the actual in the cooking portion of it. So, you know, if you're working on the grill station, obviously a well done steak is going to take longer than a rare steak. But is a medium rare fillet going to take longer than a mid well burger. That's the things that you'll need to kind of that you'll need to determine as you're reading through the tick. And, as you're, you know, working with the other cooks on the line. So that's the first thing, what is the thing that's going to take the longest. The next thing you want to look at is any special instructions, make sure you ensure that you understand all of those instructions. And if you do not that you get a hold of the expo, or the chef or whoever is leading the line, and make sure that you let them know hey, I don't understand this ticket so that that person can then get with the server to be able to fully understand what the guest wants. You're going to be looking for any substitutions, any omissions, any allergies, and any other kind of special instructions that the guest would like to have for their meal. Once you've determined what's going to take the longest and you understand the ticket, go ahead and get started on it. The next thing you need to look at is what is going to take what aspect is going to be the very last thing that you need to do. That will be you know, say you're working on the salad station and you've got calamari, you're working fryer as well and you've got some calamari. You don't want to start the calamari at the very beginning. You want to do that literally as ever Anything else is getting plated, and then put it up at the last minute. And then you also want to look at what kind of aspects are there that you can prepare ahead of time, or things that you can get ready before. And so when it comes to the actual plate up time of it, that everything is right there, you've got your nice applause 100% there, and you're just assembling the plate and putting it up in the window. The other thing is, in the window, you, you know, you've got on the hot side, you've got the heat lamps. And it's really important that you do not put your food up into those heat lamps. before they're ready to go out. You realistically, you only have about two to three minutes of that plate sitting there on the window, before your sauces start to evaporate, and create a film any purge from the stakes, even though they've rested. If they sit underneath the heat lamp long enough, the heat lamp will start to reheat it up that steak and not so much change the temperature of the steak. But it will cause the steak to start to leach out all of its juices again. Or if you've got a sliced meats, it will start to dry out those meats. The other thing is, is if you're working on the coal station, and you've got some salads, the last thing you want to do is put up a salad. And five minutes later, the salad dressing has wilted all his lettuce, and you now have to remake that entire salad and the whole line is falling apart. So first things is you want to make sure that you figure out what's going to take the longest to prepare. Second, you want to check any instructions, any special allergies, or anything that is going to be different than a typical menu dish. And you want to see what kind of things are going to be the very last minute items. Make sure that you don't do those before it's before it's time. And then lastly, you want to look at what kind of things can you do ahead of time and get things ready. So let's let's kind of go over a couple of things. Let's say you're working on the cold line, talked a little bit about this. But let's kind of go over that what it looks like. So you get the ticket in. And you've got a fried chicken salad Caesar. And then you've also got, like I said, Your calamari. And you've got a site of French fries. Okay, so you've got to do all of those items. What's going to take the longest, you want to start the fried chicken, that's going to take the longest time to do, the next thing you want to do is probably start the french fries, because that might take a little bit not quite as long as fried chicken. But it's still going to take a good amount of time where you can set it and basically forget it. While you're working on the other items. The next thing you want to do is go ahead and get your plates ready. I like to line up my plates. So I know what's coming up. And then I will for the salad, I'll go grab all of the ingredients for salad, put it in the bowl, I'll even squirt a little bit of the dressing into the, into the bowl onto the side. And but I will not toss it. Because you want to wait until the very last minute to be able to toss it. The next thing you want to do is you're just timing everything else with anybody else that is working on a ticket or an item that's going out at the same time. Communicate with the other chefs. You know, how much longer do you have? You know, on that dish? I'll be ready in 30 seconds. What about you? Oh, it's going to be a minute. So you call back or he asks you Hey, I'm about ready to plate. How are you looking? You know I can I can push it through and get it through right and right now as well. So communication between you and the other cooks between you and the expo or the Executive Chef, whoever is leading that line. The next thing you want to do once you've got everything ready and you're ready to plate, that's when you will actually do the fried calamari drops that what I like to do is I dropped off that real quick. assemble the salad. Put the french fries in the bowl by the time I'm done with that the calamari is ready to go. Pull it off. Kind of shake off the excess oils. plate the dish and out it goes So let's say you're working on the grill, okay? And you've got your mid rare tenderloin, and you've got a mid well burger. So what do you start first? Well, the very first thing you want to do is you want to start that mid rare tenderloin. Even though it's a mid Breyer versus your mid well burger the tenderloin has is quite a bit thicker, and it is going to take a lot longer to be able to reach up to that mid rare than it would burger that is only you know, a quarter of an inch thick. So you go ahead and season your meats, put them anywhere on there. Then depending on how your establishment works, sometimes the grill guy, the only thing he's doing is the grill. Sometimes, the person who's working the grill does his entire dish. So he's got the ingredients that he needs to be able to put together his dish. So if that's the case with you, while your meats are working, like I said, next thing is get your plates line those up. Go ahead and get your burger set, your lettuce, tomato, onion, whatever you put on the burger, get all that stuff ready to go. Go ahead and put any, you know, plate designs or or anything else like that, that's, that's gonna go on that dish. You pay attention to what are the starches and vegetables that are going to go with that and tenderloin. Make sure you get those going as well. Then, once the tenderloin is about there, you go ahead and throw the burger on. And then once the tenderloin is ready, you set it off to rest as the burger is finishing cooking. And then finally, once everything is ready, slap some cheese on that burger. And go ahead and send it all out. Finished plating it, put the sauce on the tenderloin, arrange all the vegetables and the starches and everything like that, and go ahead and put up in the window. That way everything comes up in the window at the same time. Um, let's see, let's say you're working the saute. And you've got a chicken alfredo sauce or chicken alfredo dish. And, and then you've also got like a side of asparagus. So first things first, go ahead and get started on that pasta, sort of the pasta in the water, it's only going to take a couple of minutes. If you've got raw chicken, if you do your Alfredo from raw chicken, you'll want to start that first. If it's already cooked, you just warming it up. Then the possible go first. You'll kind of go over your sock Tang, get everything ready on that side. Go ahead and season your veg, get your plates lined up ready to go. And finally, once it's ready to go you once the pasta is fully cooked. And everything else for the pastures ready the this sauce and all the other vegetables in the chicken. Go ahead and marry those together. Start your asparagus because asparagus is only going to take one minute, plate up your pasta, put it up in the window and grab your asparagus plate up the asparagus, any garnishes and stick it up in the window. So that's kind of what you're doing as when you're looking at a ticket. Okay? Again, the first thing what's going to take the longest, make sure that you understand the ticket so that everything so you don't have to redo the dish because of a misunderstanding. You look at what's the very last thing to do, you can kind of get those prepped up ready to go. But make sure you don't start until the very end. And then work on the core items that need to happen between the beginning and the final thing and the final and garnish and played up in a window. So what happens when you start getting a lot of tickets at the same time? Me personally, I like to tell people when they're first starting out, just focus on the one ticket and then work your way up to about three tickets in advance. Once you start getting up to three tickets, if you've got your music plus ready to go, and you've got everything else ready to go, it's very difficult to be able to work plate and put in the window more than three tickets at a time. But what you can do is you focus on those three tickets as far as the as far as that that middle preps section, you know the actual working of the dish, but you can also look further ahead 456 tickets for those longest time items. So you can go ahead and get those things started. So that while you're working everything else you are, you know, you've got all of your steaks on the grill. While your steaks are working, you're doing the plate ups, you're doing the seasoning of the vegetables and salting the vegetables, you're getting the starches ready. And, and so that when it comes time to prep, when it comes time to plate, you've got everything ready. The other thing about looking for five, six tickets ahead. And as you can see if there's any of your starches or vegetables that will hold things that you can basically what we call sandbag, and make a larger batch. So that it makes it through the entire, you know, 1520 minutes that you're going to be working on those tickets. So those would be things like any of your starches, those tend to be more hardier, they don't deteriorate very quickly. Any of your hearty or vegetables, like your root vegetables, or things like that. The one thing that you want to make sure that you do not sandbag is any of your green vegetables. Or, if you're working on the salad station, you know, you do not want to put the dressing on a larger batch of lettuce, because by the time you get around to putting up that last dish of that four or five tickets, though, the lettuce will have been wilted already. And by the time it finally makes it out to the guest, a guest will not be happy because they've got a soggy salad. So as you're looking at it, what I like to tell people, again, is focus on three tickets. Once you're able to focus on three tickets, the items that take the time to get ready. By the time you get the first one and two tickets ready, the those items from the first, those longer ticket time items for that third will be already ready. And it'll be a real quick up and out. So there you have it. It's kind of quick, but you know, things happen really fast in the kitchen. And to give you an idea of what you should be looking at as far as the amount of time it takes for you to get through a ticket. What I like to say is, if you're working at breakfast, 10 minutes, 10 minutes tops, if things are going to take longer than 10 minutes, then you need to talk with the chef to figure out ways that you can streamline that, because when people come in for breakfast, they don't want to wait more than 10 minutes. Lunch, you can usually get up to about 15 minutes, but I would advise around the 12 minute mark is usually a good indicator between the time that the server puts the ticket in and the time that you've put it up. Because you got to think as the person is sitting there, the server is taking their ticket taking their order. And then they have to go to the computer and input at all. That's going to take about five minutes. So as as far as a person who's sitting down and sit down restaurant and waiting for their lunch, they've got a short amount of window for lunch break for lunch break. And so at the very most, you know 15 minutes, but realistically you're wanting to shoot for that 12 minute mark so that way at the the items that take the longest, still only take about 1617 minutes to make it out to the guests from the time that they order it. Now, when you're coming to a dinner restaurant, you know things are a lot you know more loose. A lot of it depends on the style of the restaurant. But in general as a as a general rule for a first course, for your soups, salads, appetizers, things like that. You do not want to have to take and wait more than about seven minutes for that first course to come out. Your second course your entrees that you can have about a 20 minute mark is usually okay. Sometimes you can stretch it to 30 minutes on certain items, but on those kinds of items the server needs to make sure that they communicate to the guests that this is going to take a little bit longer. Obviously, if someone does order something like that, that is going to take 30 minutes from the time that they take the order, it's really important that we strive to push it a little bit faster, especially if they do not have anything as a first course. Do everything that you can to kind of push it out a little faster. As far as the servers are concerned, it is best if they mentioned to the guest, by the way, this is going to take a lot longer. Are you sure you wouldn't like something just munch on beforehand, when you're planning, when got the menus, have the server always suggest things that take two or three minutes. So they'll go out super quick. And guess who's sitting there and eating and they begin to lose time and lose or lose track of time. So that that gives you more of an opportunity to hit that 30 minute mark, and really provide amazing service. So there you have it. Those are the things that we talked about. Go ahead and get out there. If you if you like what I'm talking about. I do have other resources available on my website. It's www dot cooking physics.com. And there's a lot of recipes. There's a lot of resources there. There's a free prep list. There's a recipe template. And if you're doing any scheduling, there's a scheduling template as well to help you with that. So thank you so very much. If you liked this, please visit my website. Check it out and see what there is available. Finally, I do have an accelerate your cooking career course. This course really goes over how to prepare yourself to work within a professional kitchen. So I will see you again next week, Thursday at one o'clock Mountain Standard Time. Thank you