Prep Cook Qualifications
Prep cook qualifications come from experience or from education received at a culinary school. Prep cooks need to be efficient, able to multitask and to do so at a fast pace when needed. They need to know how to handle food safely and control portions, among other skills.
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Basic Qualities
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A prep cook should be able to work quickly in preparing different ingredients that will be needed on the kitchen cooking line. She should be able to address a few preparations at once as the orders come in. She should be certified in safe food handling and abide by all the health codes set up to maximize food safety.
Special Skills
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The prep cook is the person who prepares the food before it is cooked, such as shucking oysters and clams. A prep cook should be able to do this accurately and with speed. He should know how to prepare fish and lobster for the chef to cook. Depending upon how the restaurant orders its meat, the prep cook might have to know how to cut the correct size steaks and chops.
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Portion Control
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A prep cook needs to know how to use a scale and do portion control with the food that he is preparing. In a restaurant, even the parsley that is used for garnish needs to be portion controlled to optimize profits. The consistency of the portion sizes is important for customer presentation, also. You do not want one customer to get 8 oz. of vegetables and his dining partner to get 4 oz. This also holds true on a weekly basis with customers. If one week they get a big portion and the next week a smaller portion, they might have some complaints. Consistency with portion control is important for the prep cook.
Produce Prep
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Produce preparation is a major part of a prep cook's duties. Not only does she need to get the daily vegetables cleaned and ready for cooking, but she needs to prepare all the condiments and garnishes. She should be knowledgeable in the correct ways of cutting all the different produce to the consistency needed for the different dishes, such as stir fry or steamed vegetables. She needs to know the difference between cutting tomatoes for sandwiches and cutting them for dishes such as a taco salad.
Lingo
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He should know all the restaurant language that goes with working in a kitchen. A restaurant's kitchen gets so busy that when these directions are called out, the prep cook has to know what they mean--for example, the number "86" means there is no more of that item. "On the fly" means immediately. Restaurant kitchens have a different language all together.
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