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Fast Food and Expectations
6 years ago
Dragonwuff Musings
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Vrghr recently saw a video on Tic Toc and Twitter, of a Panera bread employee preparing their Mac & Cheese and chortling like some villain in a slasher movie about how awful the process was, and how stupid customers were for enjoying it. They took an envelope of prepared mac and placed it in a Sous Vide to quickly heat it to the proper temperature, then opened and served it in a bowl.
Folks were melting down over it! With comments of how horrid that was, and "I'll never eat there again!" or worse!
<R.Rabbit>PUUU-LEASSSSEEE!!</R.Rabbit>
Does anyone REALLY think that a Fast Food place that can crank out a bowl of hot soup or mac and cheese in under 10 minutes has an actual chef in the back frantically boiling pasta, cooking up roux,and melting in cheese sauces for the lunchtime rush? Or that a battalion of cooks with an assembly line of stoves and ovens are preparing dozens of different soups, a la the "back of the house" kitchen shown in "Ratatouille"?
Or, if they did, that they could make any of it in under 10 minutes and sell it for $5 a serving?
Here's a secret, if you didn't know it already - - - EVERY chain restaurant, whether it be "fast food" like Taco Bell, Panera, etc., or a sit-down service like Olive Garden, has at least part if not the majority of their ingredients prepared at another location, frozen, and shipped to the local store for prep and serving! EVERY! ONE!
"From Scratch" cooking is the EXCEPTION, not the rule! And even those establishments that offer some of their creations "from scratch", generally use some prepared ingredients for others. For example, a diner might form up their burgers on the spot and smash them on the flat top, but still pour the frozen pre-made fries out of a bag and into their fryer.
The key for a Chain place is generally two-fold: Quality and Consistency! If you have the Pasta Alfredo at an Olive Garden in Colorado, it's got to taste exactly the same as the plate you get in Oregon or in Wisconsin. They can't have customers flocking to one outlet because it has "better food" than any other. And they DEFINITELY can't have local cooks screwing up their carefully tested tastes and ruining the dish by forgetting the garlic or substituting rosemary for oregano!
The taco meat at Taco Bell, the nuggets at McD's, the sauces at Olive Garden, the soups and mac at Panera, even the breads, the sides, the toppings - - nearly ALL of it is prepared at central kitchens to exacting standards, and then flash frozen and sealed to preserve flavor and freshness before being shipped to the local outlets.
And be assured that every one of those outlets has VERY precise and immutable standards on how each of those is to be re-heated, reconstituted, fried, baked, or otherwise prepared!
Look, wuff LOVES cooking with Sous Vide. Check Vrghr's gallery and you'll find lots of recipes there that wuff creates using that technique. And one of the things Vrghr briefed at his Megaplex panel was the wonderful, TASTY and SAFE, time saving option of batch-cooking those recipes, quick chilling them still in their sealed pouches, and then freezing them for later prep! Just take them out of the freezer, toss them directly back in a Sous Vide set to a serving (not cooking) temperature, and walk away until ready to eat!
All the flavor stays locked inside. The food remains inside the pasteurized bag, untouched until you're ready to eat it later. And you can come home worn and tired and still put something on the table with absolutely minimal effort, and have it taste as good as the day you created it!
You don't think chain restaurants aren't taking advantage of that? Heck, they did it FIRST! The home version of a Sous Vide circulator is an offshoot of the industrial ones used in hospitals and food service!
So the next time you see a bunch of yokels pitching a fit about "Processed" and "unsafe" and "Bad" things that some specific chain restaurant is doing and threatening to ban or boycott or otherwise avoid it, you can let them know that if they TRULY want to avoid those sorts of practices, they only have 2 choices:
- Cook it at home and avoid every can, jar, or pre-made convenience ingredient (after all, that's exactly what they're objecting to at the chain place)
- Or if they're lucky, find the couple little independent places in town that actually "scratch cook" their menu, and be prepared to wait for at least an hour for their food and pay a hefty sum for the privilege of eating at such vanishing and special places!
Or, they can use their new-found knowledge to spread the word of REAL consumer market cooking, and tell the ones making such ignorant videos to take their nonsense elsewhere.
Bon Appetite!
VRGHR
Folks were melting down over it! With comments of how horrid that was, and "I'll never eat there again!" or worse!
<R.Rabbit>PUUU-LEASSSSEEE!!</R.Rabbit>
Does anyone REALLY think that a Fast Food place that can crank out a bowl of hot soup or mac and cheese in under 10 minutes has an actual chef in the back frantically boiling pasta, cooking up roux,and melting in cheese sauces for the lunchtime rush? Or that a battalion of cooks with an assembly line of stoves and ovens are preparing dozens of different soups, a la the "back of the house" kitchen shown in "Ratatouille"?
Or, if they did, that they could make any of it in under 10 minutes and sell it for $5 a serving?
Here's a secret, if you didn't know it already - - - EVERY chain restaurant, whether it be "fast food" like Taco Bell, Panera, etc., or a sit-down service like Olive Garden, has at least part if not the majority of their ingredients prepared at another location, frozen, and shipped to the local store for prep and serving! EVERY! ONE!
"From Scratch" cooking is the EXCEPTION, not the rule! And even those establishments that offer some of their creations "from scratch", generally use some prepared ingredients for others. For example, a diner might form up their burgers on the spot and smash them on the flat top, but still pour the frozen pre-made fries out of a bag and into their fryer.
The key for a Chain place is generally two-fold: Quality and Consistency! If you have the Pasta Alfredo at an Olive Garden in Colorado, it's got to taste exactly the same as the plate you get in Oregon or in Wisconsin. They can't have customers flocking to one outlet because it has "better food" than any other. And they DEFINITELY can't have local cooks screwing up their carefully tested tastes and ruining the dish by forgetting the garlic or substituting rosemary for oregano!
The taco meat at Taco Bell, the nuggets at McD's, the sauces at Olive Garden, the soups and mac at Panera, even the breads, the sides, the toppings - - nearly ALL of it is prepared at central kitchens to exacting standards, and then flash frozen and sealed to preserve flavor and freshness before being shipped to the local outlets.
And be assured that every one of those outlets has VERY precise and immutable standards on how each of those is to be re-heated, reconstituted, fried, baked, or otherwise prepared!
Look, wuff LOVES cooking with Sous Vide. Check Vrghr's gallery and you'll find lots of recipes there that wuff creates using that technique. And one of the things Vrghr briefed at his Megaplex panel was the wonderful, TASTY and SAFE, time saving option of batch-cooking those recipes, quick chilling them still in their sealed pouches, and then freezing them for later prep! Just take them out of the freezer, toss them directly back in a Sous Vide set to a serving (not cooking) temperature, and walk away until ready to eat!
All the flavor stays locked inside. The food remains inside the pasteurized bag, untouched until you're ready to eat it later. And you can come home worn and tired and still put something on the table with absolutely minimal effort, and have it taste as good as the day you created it!
You don't think chain restaurants aren't taking advantage of that? Heck, they did it FIRST! The home version of a Sous Vide circulator is an offshoot of the industrial ones used in hospitals and food service!
So the next time you see a bunch of yokels pitching a fit about "Processed" and "unsafe" and "Bad" things that some specific chain restaurant is doing and threatening to ban or boycott or otherwise avoid it, you can let them know that if they TRULY want to avoid those sorts of practices, they only have 2 choices:
- Cook it at home and avoid every can, jar, or pre-made convenience ingredient (after all, that's exactly what they're objecting to at the chain place)
- Or if they're lucky, find the couple little independent places in town that actually "scratch cook" their menu, and be prepared to wait for at least an hour for their food and pay a hefty sum for the privilege of eating at such vanishing and special places!
Or, they can use their new-found knowledge to spread the word of REAL consumer market cooking, and tell the ones making such ignorant videos to take their nonsense elsewhere.
Bon Appetite!
VRGHR
For example, an Organic broccoli and cheese soup vs one from a conventional source would arrive in virtually identical manner at a chain outlet serving that sort of soup.
Unless the restaurant specifically lists their dishes as "scratch made", they're likely batch made elsewhere. Or at least a component of them likely is. This is especially true of Chain establishments, regardless of their brand.
No illusions about fast food here. Thanks for keeping people informed, Vrghr!
Wuff's pleasure!
Frankly, I only go to chains and sit down places if the price is reasonable for what I get. And by reasonable I mean, if the cost is on par or cheaper than what I could "make" the dish I'm ordering at home. (which a lot of the times I can't haha)
Thanks for the insight.
Wuff appreciates the talents of the chefs in those places that still actually do some of the cooking. And Vrghr also appreciates the flavors and convenience of the chain places. Their recipes are tried and proven, and when wuffy finds a dish he enjoys, he can be sure it will be just as good the next time.
It can be tough to economically duplicate a lot of those dishes at home. Problem is, a lot of the ingredients can be a bit pricey, and most of them only need a little bit of those expensive items. Then what is wuff to do with all the rest? Sure, Vrghr can save them a lot of times for future creations. But they can still add up to quite a bill to buy all the items needed for just a few servings. Like bottles of aged Balsamic or Truffle Oil. Or spices like Saffron.
And you're also right about being able, or not able, to create some of those lovely items. That amazing Sushimi creation from Tomo Sushi that wuff just posted in Scraps, is a great example!
( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/33416119/ )
The best fast food chain out there in America? Its Whataburger but that's a Texas thing.
Wuff will have to check out a Whataburger if he ever gets to a region that has them.
Well said!
V.
It's entirely possible, and frequently done, to get as high a quality or even better food made this way, as with a 'scratch made' place. And even more likely to get consistent results over 'made from scratch'. Nothing wrong with good scratch made places, but they can certainly have their 'off days'.
Idk people find reasons to be upset over everything. If you want made from scratch, don't go to fast food or casual dining!