Food Production Operations - Planning Menu

In food production and operations, planning of menu is an important task. If the chef plans the menu in advance, it is easy to deliver ready food items on time. A ready menu can help organize the food preparation and ensures the chef cooks not only tasty but also healthy and nutritious food. It also helps in reducing wastage of food items and cooking fuel resources, and thus saves money.

Menu planning also facilitates purchasing and storing required food items. If a food preparation organization is providing multiple cuisines from all over the world, menu planning makes the theme easy.

What is Menu?

Menu is the detailed list of food items offered at the food service establishment. Menu planning is nothing but selection of menu for an occasion or otherwise. Menu can be different for different meals of the day such as breakfast, lunch, brunch, and dinner.

What is Course?

It is a sequential serving of dishes or the sets of dishes under a meal. A meal can contain at least three to at the most eleven courses.

There are two prominent types of menus − The food menu, beverage menu, and bar menu.

Food Menus

The structure of food menus largely depends on the type of cuisine, time of the day, and serving styles. The dinner menu is generally arranged course wise. For Example, Appetizers, Starters, Main Course, Desserts, and Beverages.

Types of Food Menus

There are various types of food menus −

• d' hôte − In this type, multi-course meals with limited choice are charged at a fixed collective price. It is also called prix fixe, set meal,or set menu. Food in the menu is kept ready.
• La’ Carte − An individual dish in the list is priced separately. Food is cooked to order and hence takes longer time to deliver.
• Event Menus − These are organized for events such as wedding, birthday, anniversary, and similar other. Such menus are designed well in advance by considering availability of seasonal ingredients.
• Ethnic Menus − They are designed as per the cultures, their eating preferences, tastes, and habits around the world. For example, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Kosher, African, and a few similar ones.
• Theme Menus − It reflects ambience of the theme based food joint.
• Hospital Menus − A dietician is generally involved while compiling such menus to ensure the recipient eats healthy food always. The patient has least choice.
• Institutional Menus − It is the menu of meals offered for the staff or students at the college, school, or hostel. It is generally healthy breakfast and/or three course meal with some choice.

Structure of Food Menu

The menu must contain the following fields −

• Name of the Food Item − Preferably in English and in Local language.
• Short Description on Preparation − A classy description of what exactly the recipient is going to get.
• The scale of Hotness − In case the dish is savory.
• Variants − The subcategories of main food item.
• Price − Cost per unit dish/serving.

The menu card must be designed to catch the eyes and must be tempting. The description of food items must be easy to read and understandable.

Beverage Menu

Beverage is a refreshing drink other than water. It is divided into two broad categories −

• Hot Drinks − They mean tea, coffee, chocolate and their variants, milo, and plain milk.
• Cold Drinks − Carbonated cold drinks, lemon based drinks, local flavored drinks such as buttermilk, juices, cold coffee, iced tea, mocktails, etc.

The beverage menu must contain the following fields −

• Name of the Beverage − Preferably in English and in Local language.
• The Taste and Flavor − To build the mood.
• Variants − The subcategories of main beverage.
• Price − Cost per unit serving.

Bar Menu

If the food service establishment is serving alcoholic drinks, this menu is required. The bar menus contain the list of liquors, cocktails, mixed drinks, bartender's specialties, soft drinks, one plate meals, and snacks.

The bar menu must be composed of the following fields −

• Name of the Drink − Preferably in English and in Local language.
• The Taste and Flavor − To understand build the mood.
• Variants − The subcategories of main drink/dish/snack.
• Price − Cost per unit serving.

It must also contain a message for responsible drinking.

Factors Affecting Menu Compilation

There are numerous factors that affect menu compilation −

• Budget of food ingredients procurement
• Staff capability
• Availability of seasonal vegetables, fruits, and seafood
• Adverse health factors such as poultry affected with bird flu
• Lack of special facilities or equipment required for cooking
• Costing of recipe considering ingredients + fuel + time
• Total cost of each dish
• Total cost of whole meal
• Profit margins

Appropriate Pairing of Food and Beverage

Food and beverage are paired in such a way that there is a contrast with slightly different intensity so that the taste of each should counter the other and not spoil it. Pairing and advising which drink goes best with the selected dish is one of the charming tasks in food operations.

The rule of thumb here is, lighter drinks go well with milder food and more robust drinks go with more intensely flavored food. Here are some popular pairings −

Beverage	Goes with	Reason for Pairing
Hot filter coffee	South Indian Food	The bitterness enhances spices in the food.
Hot spiced tea	Pakoras and Fritters	Tea enhances flavor of their ingredients and cleanses throat after eating this deep fried food.
Iced tea	Sandwiches, Subs	The sharp taste of tea balances mild taste of bread food.
Carbonated drink like Coke, Pepsi, or 7Up	Pizza	To balance the taste of smoky cheese and toppings.
Champaign	Salty and savory foods.	Light and slight sweet taste of Champaign balances the salt.
Pinot Grigio white wine	Fish steak, chicken steak.	The wine flavor compliments non-veg flavor.
Pinot Noir Light Red wine	Grilled Vegetables and Meats.	The wine’s farmyard aroma enhances smoky flavor of grilled dishes.

Trends in Modern Diets

The lifestyle of 21^st century people comes with hectic and busy days that may at times forces them to compromise on consuming healthy food. To keep the health well maintained, they people are aware of the importance of healthy food. They carefully choose what they eat.

Some of the modern trends include −

• Consuming low fat, low calorie food.
• Preferring baked food rather than deep fried food.
• Preferring more leafy vegetables, fruits, and 100% juices.
• Avoiding consumption of sugar or preferring natural sugars/sweeteners.
• Preferring food ingredients that are grown organically.
• Preferring natural drinks such as coconut water, green tea, and fresh juices over carbonated drinks.

Apart from these basic preferences, people follow some special diet plans such as −

• Caveman’s Diet − Consuming a lot of protein, very less or almost no carbohydrates, no sugar and confectionery.
• 5 Factor Diet − A US-based actress, Halle Berry, made this diet popular. This diet includes five meals a day, which does not take more than five minutes to be ready on a plate, accompanied by five exercises of five minutes each for five days in a week.
• Facial Analyst Diet − A facial analyst examines skin, eyes, and hair to arrive at an appropriate diet plan.
• Raw Food Diet − As the name suggests, it includes consumption of only fruits, salad vegetables, and their juices for some span of time.
• Fat Flush Diet − To increase the metabolism, this plan of diet recommends avoiding tea, coffee and alcohol, and consuming flaxseed oil, coconut oil, cranberry juice, and vitamins.

The commercial food preparation and service outlets need to update themselves on the contemporary diet fads and include diet food on their menu accordingly.

Food Operations - Methods of Cooking

When it comes to the cookery part of food production operations, it is very important to select an appropriate cooking method. The cooking method has a direct impact on the taste, texture, appearance, and flavor of the resulting food product.

There are three types of cooking used widely −

• Dry heat cooking
• Moist heat cooking
• Combination cooking

Dry Heat Cooking

This cooking involves cooking food without using water or stock. It is a quick method to cook food, in which the food items come out a little crisp. Generally small, tender, and thin food items are cooked using oil under dry heat cooking methods. The resulting food has nice smoky aroma because of caramelization and browning. The following dry heat cooking methods are popular −

Broiling

It involves cooking the food items by exposing it directly to heat such as open fire, coal, grill or electric coil. Meat steaks and whole fish are broiled.

Grilling

It is a method of cooking by placing the food on a mesh of cast iron. Millard reaction brings flavor to the food being cooked. The resulting food is quite dry, reduced with oil. It is ideal for small to medium shaped meat cuts, vegetables, tofu, or cottage cheese.

Roasting

It is a way of cooking food by exposing it to dry radiant heat over open fire, in oven, or at times within surrounding hot embers, sand, or stones. Vegetables, meat, corn on cob, potatoes, and sweet potatoes are roasted.

Baking

It is a manner of cooking food by exposing it to prolonged dry heat, normally in an oven, hot embers, or on hot stones. The heat is gradually transferred from the surface of the food item being baked to its center which gives it a firm dry crust and a soft center. Baking needs high temperature control. Breads, cookies, pies, and tarts are baked.

Sautéing

It is frying the food items with little oil in a pan exposed to high heat. The food in the pan requires stirring and tossing so that it does not burn because of high heat.

Shallow Frying

It promotes browning and Maillard reaction. The food is cooked in more amount of oil than used in sautéing to that a surface of the food is always in contact with the oil. The food is turned occasionally till it gets cooked evenly.

Deep Frying

The food is immersed in the ample amount of oil that is heated up to its smoking point. The food is turned for even cooking. The resulting food is very crispy. Fritters, Potato chips, Pakoras (Onion-Chick Pea flour fritters), and Vadas are deep fried.

Moist Heat Cooking

This cooking is carried out by immersing the food item in a liquid such as water, stock, or wine; at various temperatures ranging between 60^oC to above 100^oC. Following are some of the essential stages of moist heat cooking −

Poaching

It is done by heating liquid to temperature around 70^oC to 85^oC where liquid in the pan is hot but not bubbling hot. The bubbles appear at the bottom of the pan or pot. Poaching is used for very delicate food items such as fish or eggs.

Simmering

It is done by immersing food item completely in the liquid and heating it at 85^oC to 95^oC; the temperature is hotter than that in poaching. Bubbles form and gradually rise to the surface. It is the standard method followed for preparing soups and stocks.

Boiling

It is carried out at the hottest temperatures of the three techniques; above 100^oC. The high temperature toughens some foods such as meat and eggs. It breaks delicate food items such as fish and vegetables.

Steaming

It is carried out by heating the liquids like water past its boiling point (212^o F) and generates steam. Steam carries more heat than boiling water. It is the most appropriate method for cooking seafood, vegetables, and other delicate food items.

Combination Cooking

It involves both; use of dry heat as well as moist heat cooking. Combination cooking is performed as slow cooking. It is an excellent way of cooking thick vegetables and tougher meat cuts. There are two basic types of this cooking −

Braising

It includes two step cooking with light frying of food and then immersing it in liquid to make stew. In the first step, the food is fried with adequate oil. While frying or sautéing, the heat is transferred to food via pan. In the next step, a liquid is added to it and the food is cooked while the pan is covered with a lid. This way, the steam is caught in the pan and the heat is transferred to the food by convection. Meat curries and stews are braised.

Braising is used to cook large portions of meats such as beef, pork, and game. The meat cuts are often immersed partially.

Stewing

This is also very similar to braising as far as the cooking steps are concerned. Stewing uses small to medium uniform cuts of tender meat such as poultry or lamb, or vegetables. In case of stewing, the cuts of meat or vegetables are completely immersed in the liquid. Stewing takes little lesser time than braising.

Food Operations – Kitchen Equipment & Fuel

Commercial kitchen equipment need to produce food for a large number of consumers. It needs to be robust, durable, and easy to operate. The equipment should consume less electricity, improve the productivity of food production operations, and must be eco-friendly. Last but not the least, it should serve its purpose effectively.

Most kitchen equipment are operated electronically. There is a wide range of cooking, cutting, baking, and cleaning equipment available for the kitchen staff.

Let us introduce ourselves to some typical kitchen equipment.

Commercial Food Production Equipment

Here are some basic food production equipment.

Burners

They are used for cooking, boiling, and steaming. They often operate on Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG). Now induction burners and hot plates are available, which operate on electricity. They come with open top, mesh top, or flat top.

Cooking Ranges

Cooking range is the most versatile equipment operating on either LPG or electricity. The name implies, it can perform a range of functions such as cooking, frying, boiling, grilling, and baking. It comes in two basic versions −

• Restaurant range − Less expensive, good for less food volume, and is stand alone.
• Heavy duty range − Expensive, suits a large volume of food production, and can be banked with other ranges using a battery.

Cooking ranges come with multiple burners usually 4 to 8, depending upon the volume of food to be handled.

Ovens

They are used for cooking, baking, roasting, and browning. They operate either on LPG or electricity. There are various oven models such as Rack with the option of rotating or steady racks, Deck, and Tunnel depicting their shape and working style.

• Rack oven − It contains a set of stacked racks often placed equidistant, one above the other in a tall stainless steel frame. This oven is good to produce large volume of food items such as breads, cookies, and croissants.
• Deck oven − It contains racks or rotisseries that can cook various meats such as chicken, duck, lamb, etc. simultaneously and evenly. They also come in baking deck and pizza deck variants. The number of decks are generally up to four.
• Tunnel oven − It comes in direct heat and indirect heat variants. It is suitable for high temperature baking.

There are myriad number of ovens available in the market, which vary according to the energy they consume, the manner of heating food, sizes, and shapes.

Griddles

They are flat plates made of iron, stainless steel, or aluminium, which transfer heat to the food. Griddles are prone to heat loss when the plate is partially unused.

They are mainly used for preparing breakfast items such as omelets, scrambled eggs, patties, sandwiches, burgers, and pancakes. Normally, the residual grease needs to be wiped out occasionally from the surface to prevent tempering. In case of steel griddles, caramelization occurs if the surface is not kept clean. Teflon surface griddles are more durable and efficient.

Pans and Cooking Spoons

There are a wide range of pans, pots, and spoons used for cooking.

• Pans − Depending upon the type of cooking, the cook selects a pan. The pans serve the purpose of shallow frying, boiling, and stir frying.
• Pots − The pots are used for cooking and preparing stocks. They are generally accompanied with lids. The steamer is used to prepare steamed food such as rice, momos, and idlis (fluffy rice dumplings). There are two variants − shallow and deep.

• Spoons − The spoons help to check the thickness of liquids, tenderness of solids, stir, and turn the food in the pots and pans. Various spoons used during cooking are skimmer, turner, masher, ladle, fork-spoon, and utility spoon.

Kettles

The kettles are used for cooking, warming, and storing food. They are two layered pots- one inside the other with a gap in between for steam. They are usually jacketed, agitator tilting for better view and food handling. The kettles also have a product discharge valve that provides an efficient transfer of kettle product to a service area without damaging delicate food items.

Deep kettles are best for soups, gravies, spaghetti sauces, pie fillings, and puddings as the quality of these food items remains the same irrespective of their volume and frequent stirring. Lentils, beans, and pasta can be cooked in deep kettles.

The shallow kettles are best for cooking and warming stews, patties, steamed vegetables, where this kettle offers better view and less food handling.

Vegetable Cutters/Choppers

The cutters or choppers are used in cutting, dicing, shredding, and slicing vegetables in various shapes and sizes. They are also used to cut bread into small pieces for puddings or soups. The handheld cutters are used for cutting fruits, salads, etc. for presentation.

Cutters are made of either plastic or stainless steel. Some cutters come with single or multiple wheels with zig-zag or plain edge. Some cutters have round small bowl-like shape to cut round pieces of fruits.

Mixers

The overhead motor vertical mixer is most commonly used in commercial food production units. Mixers are used for mixing and blending. There are broadly two types of mixers − table mounted and floor mounted.

Mixers have the following standard accessories −

• Flat beater − Mashing and beating foods of medium consistency such as boiled potatoes.
• Wire whipper − whipping cream, eggs, frosts and other light foods that contain air. It works on high speed.
• Dough arm − It handles heavy and bulky ingredients such as bread dough at low speed.

Cookers and Steamers

Commercial cookers and steamers largely operate on electricity. The cooks use these for cooking rice, lentils, and vegetables.

The steamers are used for preparing steamed food such as Idli (a type of fluffy rice dumpling), momos, and dhokla.

Fryer

Some food items are prepared by immersing them in heated oil in a fryer. There are two basic versions of a fryer − Electric fryer and Gas fryer. The frying time and oil temperature varies directly with the food type and the size of the fryer. It consists of a fryer basket and heating element and a thermostat controls a fryer.

The fryers are used to fry potato chips, Pooris (fried Indian bread), doughnuts, begels, onion rings, shrimp, fish, chicken, okra, and zucchini.

Juicer

Juicers extract juices and pulps from fruits and vegetables. It operates on electricity and speeds up the juice production process. The fruits are added in the juicer from the top. It separates the juice and left over peels and unused fibers from the fruits. There are three types of juicers −

• Centrifugal − It works by crushing fruits. It is quick and yields plain juice.
• Masticating − It works longer to yield juice of specified texture and consistency.
• Twin-gear − It uses various gears and membranes to yield best quality juice of almost any fruit, carrot, tomato, or leafy vegetables. It also helps to prevent oxidation of the juice.

It is very useful in preparing juices and pulps for breakfast, for meals as appetizers, and for using them in cocktails, mocktails, and smoothies.

Maintenance Equipment in Commercial Kitchen

We will discuss here a few important maintenance equipment used in professional kitchens.

Dish Washer

It can wash multiple dishes and bowls simultaneously. It is an automatic machine but needs human interaction for loading used dishes into dish racks and unloading clean dishes after wash cycle. It eliminates a great effort required for traditional dish washing. There are two basic types of dishwasher −

• Door-type − It is large machine. It can clean from 50 to 125 dish racks depending upon the size of the machine.
• Under-counter − It is smaller and can fit under the kitchen platform.

Both dishwashers give sparkling clean dishes.

Glass Washer

It washes and dries almost 2000 glasses per hour. There are two types of glass washers − rotary and pass-through. They are mostly used at bars for washing glasses of various shapes meant for various beverages.

Dish Warmer

It can dry as many as 1800 dishes an hour and eliminates the possibility of contamination caused by conventional drying methods. It conducts speedy washing of dishes. It also keeps the micro organic particles depositing at bay for long time.

Special Equipment in Commercial Kitchen

There are a few special equipment used in commercial kitchen to make the tasks easy.

Nut cracker

It is used to crack the shells of hard nuts such as almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, palm nuts, and pistachio. Some machines are also capable of shelling watermelon and pumpkin seeds, and peeling peanuts, cashew nuts and almonds.

Shredders

A shredder cuts the fruits and vegetables into string-like fine pieces, which are useful in salads and vegetarian cookery.

Kitchen Knives

Knives are used across various small volume dicing, cutting, slicing, carving, and filleting. There are various knives used for different cutting and carving purposes −

• Paring knife − It is used for fine cutting work, removing onion skins, and cutting small fruits.
• Utility knife − It is used in general purpose cutting and scraping.
• Steak knife − It is used for cutting steaks.
• Santoku knife − Originated in Japan, this knife is used for cutting, dicing, and mincing. (Santoku = Three virtues)
• Chef’s General knife − It is a multi-purpose knife used on multiple commodities such as vegetables, fruits, meat, and poultry.

• Serrated knife (Bread Knife) − It has a long thin blade with serrated edge that provides sawing-like motion. It is used to slice certain foods with firm skins or outer layers such as bread, tomatoes, and capsicums.
• Boning/Filleting knives − They come with a narrow, sharp, and flexible blade and a protruding heel near the handle. They can run along the bones of flat fish or ribs smoothly.
• Carving knife − This knife comes with a long, thin and sharp blade to ensure neat and accurate cutting.
• Slicing knife − It has a long sharp blade that tapers at the end and helps slicing fruits and vegetables finely.
• Turning knife − It is an essential component to present the food in a unique way. This knife has a small curved blade that is used to carve the vegetables into the shape of a container.
• Cleaver − It is a butchers’ knife. It is very strong and sharp to cut through large pieces of meat such as pork and beef.

Now let us see the fuels typically used in commercial kitchen for cooking.

Fuels and Energy Used for Cooking

Fuel is a prime necessity in cookery. There are various types of fuels used for cooking food. Mainly two types of fuels are used in food production − Solid fuels and Liquid fuels.

Wood Fuel

It can be acquired from logs, wood chips, and bamboo pellets. Seasoned logs are more popular in commercial kitchen as they contain less moisture. The more the moisture, more is the smoke created while burning.

Though it is easily available, it requires a separate storage space at commercial food production end. Its calorific value is around 3500 Kcal/kg for moist wood and up to 4700 Kcal/kg for dry wood.

Charcoal

It is obtained by slow heating of wood, animal or vegetable remains in the absence of oxygen. Charcoal is easily available and widely accepted as commercial cooking fuel. It produces less smoke than wood fuel. It also requires separate storage space. Its calorific value is around 7500 Kcal/kg.

Solid fuels are useful in direct heating ovens, three stone stoves, tandoor, and barbeques. This fuel can emit carbon or ash particles while burning. Solid fuels give gradual heating. The initial cost is low. It also gives a tempting smoky aroma to the baked/roasted food.

Liquid Propane

It is nothing but LPG, a mixture of propane and butane gases that exist in liquid state at room temperature. The LPG is highly inflammable and burns with a blue flame without emitting smoke, and it can be controlled precisely. Its calorific value is around 1000 Kcal/kg.

Kerosene

It is also a petroleum product used in commercial kitchens for cooking. The liquid fuels produce heat almost instantly. The initial cost can be high. They are convenient to use but risky if proper safety precautions are not followed while handling these fuels.

Electricity

Though electricity is considered as an alternative fuel under energy power, it is the most commonly used heat energy for cooking. Most of the commercial cooking appliances operate on electricity. Electricity provides instant heating. The heat can be regulated as per the requirement. It is easy to access, though the initial cost of wiring may be considerable.