Category Archives: food

April 12, 2013 · 11:37 am

What Grills Teach Us About Scaling

A rainy Friday but we’ll still have our Foodie Friday Fun as if the sun was shining and we’re firing up the grill outside.

Beef and Corn on a Charcoal BBQ grill

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is getting to be that time, of course, and with it comes one of the big differences between a professional kitchen and most amateur kitchens:  the ability to scale.  Cooking for a family of four is vastly different from making the exact same meal for 24.  In the case of the aforementioned grill, grilling burgers, dogs, and chicken for four is relatively easy; doing so for 24 requires excellent timing, a much bigger grill, and a way to keep food hot while the rest of it cooks.  That’s why I have a firm rule against “piece work” when cooking for a lot of people – I always use big cuts – racks of ribs, briskets, whole chickens – and cut them into serving pieces.  It makes scaling the operation a lot easier.

Many business folks don’t think about scaling.  They develop a product or service or management style that works when things are small but which can’t handle a much larger set of challenges.  Managing a staff of three can be easy – communication should be efficient, there are only a few egos and skill sets to align.  When three becomes 30, look out, especially if your management style is one of detachment or tolerance rather than engagement.  Obviously there are technical challenges in many businesses as well – servers can only handle so much traffic, sloppy code can’t process quickly enough to handle demand are some examples in tech.  Customer service lines can be full, inventory management can be a nightmare – some non-tech issues.  Those are things that must be contemplated very early on with an eye towards the stress brought on by success (not a bad problem to have, right?)

How the business will grow and how to support that growth is probably not on enough radars.  Do we get bigger through new products?  Do we add areas of focus?  Do we get enough funding to make acquisitions?  Strange as it may seem, planning a cookout can help think it through.  If you’re running out of food or serving it cold, guest walk away hungry or maybe sick.  Scaling to serve your guests (customers) isn’t something that just happens – it requires thought and planning.  So does business!

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April 5, 2013 · 11:04 am

Crowding The Pan

Foodie Friday Fun time.  Today I want to talk about the Maillard reaction.  No, it has nothing to do with ducks – those are Mallards.  This is something that goes on in cooking when heat causes the natural sugar in food to change.  You can think of it as browning although it’s a lot more complex than that.  The process creates lots of flavors and why we sear off meats before roasting or we will cook vegetables in a recipe to bring out flavors before adding other ingredients.

 

Quails browning

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The thing about bringing out this reaction is that you can’t crowd things in the pan.  It’s why we’re often told to brown meat in batches.  You’ve probably tried to brown some ground meat and noticed that rather than browning it sort of steams in its own liquid.  It’s not brown – it’s kind of grey.  The same problem occurs in baking – too many cookies on the sheet and they don’t cook properly.

 

The fix is pretty simple:  give everything a little space and take a bit more time as you plan out your cooking time. Give your food plenty of room to move around in the pan, and let it cook in a single layer.  Which is, of course, the business point as well.

 

We often crowd people with too many tasks and a multitude of instructions   As businesses we often put too many things into our figurative pan.  Rather than getting the reactions we want (nice even browning with a lovely fond on the bottom of the pan) we get a soggy grey mess or soggy, limp vegetables that don’t have a lot of flavor.  We need to take a few things out of people’s’ pans or focus or business on fewer things. Give everything a little more space and allow time for things to develop properly.  Of course, there are those cooks who think they can skip the searing altogether.  That’s a big mistake which you recognize once you’ve done that and tasted the results.  Business takes time and there are certain steps that you can’t omit if you want a great product.

 

We’re all under a lot of pressure for results, both in the office and in the kitchen.  Overcrowding the pan in either place might get us where we want to go more rapidly but the results are inferior.  No one wants “OK” as a response, not when “WOW” is sitting there waiting.

 

How full is your pan?

 

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March 22, 2013 · 10:17 am

An Unleavened Week Of Business

This week’s Foodie Friday Fun is our annual reflection on Passover.  The holiday starts Monday night although in many homes the cooking will begin over the weekend.  What – you eat your brisket on the day it’s made?  Despite debates over what exactly species of fish is a “gefilte” (it means “filled, by the way), there are no debates that this seems to be the favorite holiday of many Jews as well as of the non-Jews who join in the celebratory dinner.

English: Passover plate with symbolic foods: m...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The thing about Passover that raises a business thought today is that it’s a week of eating that’s out of the ordinary.  While the first question in the dinner service is “why is this night different,” it’s the week without leavened foods of any sort that’s the biggest change for many.  Some Jews won’t eat anything that swells up – beans, rice, etc. – as well as abstaining from bread and cakes made with leavening agents.  It’s a subtile reminder throughout the week that the escape from Egypt, the deliverance of the people, and the lessons learned from those events shouldn’t be forgotten.  Which is the business point as well.

What if every business designated a week during which something they did on a daily basis was changed?  Maybe they turned of internal email and made face to face conversations happen.  Maybe they let everyone work on projects that were important to the people involved rather than things important to the business.  Or just maybe they refused to let anyone use the word “can’t” or the phrases “bad idea” or “not do-able”.  I’m sure you can think of a few things that your organization could do differently for a time to cause everyone involved to focus on something other than the day-to-day routine.

The Jews spent 40 years wandering around in the desert after they left Egypt.  Many businesses spend a lot of time figuratively wandering around as well.  Maybe a week of change can provide a better focus and get you to your goals more effectively.  Worth a shot?

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