Food Prep Equipment

Minimize Labor And Maximize Efficiency With Food Prep Equipment

Cooking and serving consistently delectable dishes start with chopping onions, slicing tomatoes, tenderizing meat, rolling dough balls, or weighing ingredients precisely for each portion. Food prep equipment is every manual or automatic kitchen gadget that performs these tasks efficiently. Commercial operations require speed and consistency. Diners immediately notice the evenly thin potato slices in french fries, perfectly round patty in a hamburger, or finely diced carrot cubes in a salad. Food prep equipment makes many such time-consuming tasks a breeze. 

Food Prep Equipment Types

Serving delicious food to your customers under any circumstances is only possible with an effective workflow. On a busy day in your restaurant, keeping up with orders at that time may be chaos if not managed well. Food prep equipment can prepare ingredients for cooking vessels or serving utensils in advance, so you’ll be ready for a dinner rush. Yet, commercial kitchens are packed with food prepping tasks, and there are various tools specialized in each.

1. Meat Processing Equipment

Meat is one of the staples of restaurant menus. Therefore, butchers, meat plants, and restaurants need special food prep equipment to process meat. Meat can also be the primary source of foodborne illnesses, so it must be handled, stored, and processed carefully. Meat processing units minimize human contact, accelerate the process, increase shape and weight uniformity, and limit the waste of this invaluable ingredient. They also give you complete control over the taste and look of your meat menus.

Meat slicers can cut your meat in various thicknesses up to one inch. Meat and bone saws are electric machines with innovative features and safe operation to cut slabs of meat into desired pieces. You can create better-marinaded meat recipes when you open thin slits on both sides of your steaks, pork chops, or veal cutlets with a meat tenderizer. A meat grinder & chopper uses a powerful motor to give you ground and chopped meat at adjustable thicknesses. All these and other meat processing equipment retain the shape and flavor and reduce waste during the process.

2. Fruit & Vegetable Cutters

You don’t have to deal with the mess of fruit skins, fleshes, juice or vegetable pieces spilled on the kitchen floor or spread over your countertop. You can prepare tasty salads with minimum product waste by chopping, dicing, wedging, or slicing fruit and produce. French fry cutters are among the most purchased in this category, and vegetable dicers, tomato slicers, or wedgers are some of the other choices. A commercial peeler would do the magic, saving time on a potato or garlic peeling and at different tasks.

3. Food Processors

Food processors are electric units designed for multiple food prep tasks, such as slicing, chopping, or dicing in a commercial kitchen. You can grind spices and meat, shred onions, or puree different vegetables to cook soup, sauces, or pasta. These kitchen robots are available in several bowl types, capacities, and speed options. 

4. Commercial Blenders And Mixers

Blending and mixing are two restaurant kitchens’ most frequent food prep tasks. Commercial blenders liquefy any ingredients with blades inside a jar to make purees or juices. A different version is the immersion blender, an electric handheld gadget that you immerse into any container filled with the ingredients to be blended. Both run at multiple speeds to make delicious and refreshing smoothies. If you serve dough-based recipes, you can get a commercial mixer for the mixing, kneading, or whipping processes in dough preparation.

5. Dough Preparation Equipment

The central food prep duty in bakeries or pizzerias is dough preparation. So, when shopping for food prep equipment, dough roller machines, sheeters, rounders, or dividers come first. These units will cut dough into same-sized balls and flatten them into dough sheets. Customers enjoy different pizza crust types, so pizza shops also need pizza dough presses to create pizza bases at desired thickness without a skilled workforce.     

Some Quick Tips for Food Prep Equipment

Your food prep equipment list might seem endless, from can openers and scales to food packaging machines and pasta extruders. Therefore, to be selective, you should carefully consider your business type, menu items, and output volume. The tips below can also help you specify the items on your list.

• Quick Research:The easiest and most effective way is to collect data from your chefs and food prep staff. Ask them what tasks most occupy their time and which tire them most? Their answers will reveal the food prep equipment you need.
• Key Features:When you are up to purchase food prep equipment, your top priorities are durability, ease of use and maintenance, safety, and speed.
• Price vs. ROI:Food prep equipment will improve the quality of your menu items. Delicious dishes will contribute to happy customers, which will boost your profit. Therefore, the purchasing decision should be based on return on investment rather than price.
• Manual vs. Electric: Most food prep equipment have manual or automatic operation alternatives. The volume of the ingredients processed in your kitchen is a crucial factor. High-volume processing of multiple items requires an automatic unit to pace demands and get faster and more consistent results.

Running a foodservice facility can be costly, but maximum efficiency and profitability are possible with the right tools. A highly versatile machine rarely used means a waste of your precious finance. While checking out Chef’s Deal’s broad-ranging food prep equipment, you can always get a free consultation from experienced representatives.