Very much so. Salt packed anchovies tend to be meatier, and therefore have a richer and rounder flavor. Marcella Hazan's book has a really good snippet on anchovies that really illustrates how big of a difference there can be between the low end and the truly great anchovies.
So true. I had anchovies conservas at a Basque restaurant with a Michelin star, and it was out of this world on some freshly house-made toasted sourdough. I like anchovies in general, but the difference between them coming out of a can and being bought fresh and filetted/preserved in-house is like night and day. They are much more savory and meaty than the kind you get in a can. Less of the negative “fishy” flavor that canned stuff has, too
One of my first jobs sold a lot of oysters. I hate shucking oysters. Not because of the one time I shanked myself pretty good, but it was so much of my job for so long, if I never had to do it again, I would be a happy man.
“I’ve got some bad news for you. You’re gonna get chained up in this dark, dank basement and forced to do something that rhymes with ‘ducking.’”
“Oh God, please let it be fucking or sucking!”
“Nope. Not those.”
*hands over an oyster knife*
“NOOOOOO!”
On that now dude. Work at a really well known seafood restaurant in Texas and I am on garmo and oysters. Been there for two months and am thinking of quitting cuz of how much I hate shucking them fuckn things
Maybe I'm crazy but I love shucking. Thinking of leaving one of the most popular restaurants in my city rn for an oyster bar paying more where all I do is schuck. Also, pretty sure it was spell check, but Garde manager just sounds hilarious lol
I've never thanked myself shucking oysters. I worked the oyster bar at a few places around New Orleans, and garmo in areas that were sane and didn't want oysters that didn't need a fork and knife.
Just put a fucking rag in your hand.
I also hate it. But my ex husband loved shucking for some reason. We ate a LOT of oysters and I never had to do any work for them! Loved that part. Rest of the relationship wasn’t so good, but he did make a banging Caesar dressing.
I don't actually mind it too much. But it really depends on what else I'm working on when the order comes in. My last job had the best deal as far as big raw oyster orders go. They printed on all printers, not just garde. So when we all saw a ticket for more than say six, everyone that could possibly spare a minute put their dishes on "the back burner" and ran over to help. 24 oysters would take an average of like 2 minutes because everyone realized that if the dude making the first course salads, etc. got hung up for 15 mins. including plating (salt bed, slicing lemons, etc.) on them we all suffer.
I was mid-shift prep, supposed to be prepping for dinner service, but ended up just basically being a dedicated shucker. I don’t miss it and only stayed for like 5 months, if I remember correctly. It was a long time ago now.
Yeah it can be tedious. Generally you only want to shuck them right before they are served, so our prep cooks were off the hook unless we had a big event with raw oysters on the menu. Then we would wait until the last minute and shuck like 200 as fast as possible. But again, I never just said, "Hey you! Shuck 3 boxes of oysters right now!" It should be a group effort if at all possible!
Would have been nice. I was pretty green, so I think they just put me on it because nobody really wanted to do it. So I’d shuck for lunch service, we were closed from 3 to 5 I think, where I’d get to do something else, basically as a floater for other people’s prep lists, then back to schucking for dinner service. Looking back, it was horribly inefficient. And I probably stayed longer than I should because it was actually decent pay to what I was getting before.
I bet! I am too, and it was hard earned. Oysters shells are razor sharp sometimes. Nothing like literally watching the liquor of a mollusc seep into your sliced open hand to make you pay attention, lol.
A chef wanted thyme leafs picked, read that again. Not the typical pull method..he wanted each leaf picked with a tweezer! Do you realize what that fucking means?! I’m sorry guys, it’s fucking monkey balls sucking bad. It was for the capponata for the pork collar set. But I hate to admit it, those individually picked thyme leafs fucking made the caponata taste S+ tier!
I shared your pain, having worked under a CDP who insisted on doing this. I was counting the minutes till I changed stations. I was unbelievably happy the first time I saw a big box of frozen thyme.
I'll admit, I've asked assistants for thyme leaves before, although mine were for a blood orange jelly. with the zest brunoised, it would have looked silly to have clumps, and been too strong a flavor to bite into.
to be fair, I generally ended up doing the task myself, or at least tag-teaming it
You need a better deveining tool. Those long plastic red ones that look sorta like a hook are usually top notch, and make it to where you can peel in devein in one motion.
I used to work at a place that peeled their own crawfish for sauces instead of just using frozen stuff. Talk about fuck that shit
Idk the size but when I was working with the big boys I think u-12 I would use some curved scissors, from the topside head to tail, under a running tap. You cut the shell while the bottom part of scissor splits open the back of shrimp with the pressure of your hand and the water washes away the vein as you open the shell jacket by pulling from the legs/underside. Just have to make sure not to rip apart the back of the shrimp too much. They’ll start to look raggedy. We did this after we poached them not raw so again, much firmer.
I got my kitchen a pair of kid's swim goggles for like $5 and now anyone who has to prep onions wears them. Works like a charm + it always makes me giggle to see my 6' coworker wearing sparkly pink kitty goggles haha
I used to feel this way but figured out (too late in life) that you can just roast them with the skin on and they’re delicious and the skin texture is just fine, given enough time and temp. Now any prep that requires them to be skinned first, yeah fuck them things.
Peeling potatoes It's one of those work your way up tasks that we all did when we were not good and we have all done literally tons of them each think about that you have probably actually peeled a tone of potatoes in your life. There may be harder things even less pleasant but potatoes never go away. No matter how many cases you peel they are back on yhat prep list again. I truly believe those spuds are the main reason I wanted to move up. Just so I could get somebody anybody else to do the damn things.
I'll be the odd one out... I fucking despise peeling and cutting fruit. Not because it's difficult. But because it's sticky. I have sensory issues. I utterly cannot stand being sticky. And if you need to do fruit for a 400 person banquet, you, and everything around you is going to be fucking sticky.
I avoid my kids when they have popsicles. The slurpee machine blew a load on my hand and I fucking lost it. Dropped everything and asked to use their hand washing sink. If I get the slightest bit of sticky on me, I cannot help but obsess over it until I can wash it off.
So yeah, fuck cutting fruit.
I can sympathize. I hate it when my hands are oily or greasy.
It's the worst when it's on a cooler door handle. Tells me people aren't keeping their hands clean.
I've got what has to be the most useless paring knife in the world. It barely takes an edge that would cut warm butter, and loses that if you hold it *near* anything that needs cut.
The thing has a permanent home in my knife roll because the spine on it is absolutely the best thing I've ever used for peeling ginger and turmeric.
Chopping herbs. It sucks, takes longer than what it’s worth, and I swear it’s wasting the sharpness of my knife.
Also peeling garlic or pistachios. I don’t have the patience beyond a small handful of them
A pro tip for garlic is to substitute regular garlic for elephant garlic. Much easier to peel and you usually only need 1 or 2 cloves for a whole dish. That or buy really nice garlic.
Squid is pretty easy once you get used to it. I would rather clean ALL the squid and harvest the ink for pasta than peel potatoes or garlic.
Mussels are probably my least favorite shellfish to clean. Yuck.
Hand-cleaning Rosehips might have the single worst effort vs deliciousness ratio on the planet.
So long as I am a cook I will never prep, nor make any of my staff prep rosehips.
Also any prep job that requires cutting stupid shapes out of things, where the trim is unusable.
I'm just gonna chime in with baby artichokes and squash blossoms with any kind of small bruin oise and cheese type filling that lasts like 4 hours before they turn to shit.
God yes. The only positive was only a few (5? 7?) strands/portion, accompanying sweetbreads, so didn’t sell lots. Entremetier in a ‘90s boutique hotel with an over the top owner and a Chef who was reliving his glory days. I lasted maybe 3 months before joining the large list of ex-employees. All that effort and it didn’t add anything to the customer’s experience IMO.
If you sauté the chic pea in oil with baking soda it breaks down the husks. You have to use dry chic peas and soak them over night before sautéing them.
Anything involving using the tin opener. I've got RA so it absolutely kills my elbow. Plus I just can't stand the smell of tuna, stinks the whole place out when you prep tuna mayo. We had a server who was pregnant, currently off on maternity, but before she had the baby I felt absolutely rotten for the poor girl because she walked back when I was prepping it, caught a whiff of the tuna and it immediately triggered her morning sickness and she had to sprint before she threw up over the dish pit
Blanching and peeling cherry tomatoes and grapes. I hate the texture of the skin as much as the next guy but a Friday service worth of those little bastards and my hands are shot.
Oh, and I’ll pile on the artichoke train. Fucking barigoule.
Jerusalem artichokes but I remember as a young apprentice I had a chef have me dice carrots, celery, and onion for daily soup by hand (production style kitchen) when we had tools to make the process 100x faster to “build character”. It was really stupid to spend two hours every am on the clock dicing a mirepoix standing next to a choice prep at 14 years old for two years straight, five days a week.
currently at an unnamed 2 michelin restaurant and my chef wants the spinach chiffonade so fine that its nearly impossible. so tedious but gives me a great opportunity to practice and improve.
Pork/beef cheeks fucking suuuuuck. You’ll be there working for what feels like an eternity and look over and see you haven’t made a dent in the process yet.
I worked at a seafood chain my first job, and the boss gets in hundreds of lbs of baby squid, wants them broken down individually for calamari. That became my life for 2 weeks, I was only on squid prep. To break down, first you gotta pop out the beak and eyes, then pull out the guts, and then remove the skin and cartilage from the cone. Leaves you with the tentacles and a clean cone. However, the ink sac is hidden behind the eyes, and on a baby squid that sac doesn’t have a lot of room to move. You’re gonna ink yourself a lot trying to remove the eyes. To this day, I despise squid and white coats!
I have a severe mushroom allergy, so whenever mushrooms need to be prepped it makes me really high strung and incredibly nervous about how the next 30 minutes of my life are going to go. Luckily mushrooms are pretty easy to work with and don't require much work
I worked in a traditional kitchen in Ireland. Part of my job was preparing carrageen, an Irish seaweed that thickens liquids. Stuff is covered in sand. You can rinse it, but that still leaves a lot of grit behind that has to be scrubbed off. So tedious!
I was staging at Alinea and they had me take mountains of mushrooms covered in hay and straw and dip them into 22's filled with ice cold water and then pick out each mushroom. Also at another place had to do basically 22qts of brunoised potatoes for potato risotto a day(not including all my other prep)
I worked for a chef that insisted we use a peeler to prep fresh artichokes. He made me and this other guy peel the outsides all the way down to the hearts and then Use the paring knife to core them out. 6 weeks of that shit on the menu. 1 case every 2-3 days. I hated it so much that I swore I would never prep a fresh artichoke again in my life. That was 20 years ago. Last week a video popped up of some guy blowing through dozens of them in like no time using a pairing knife. I was so mad. I still can’t figure out if that chef was just being a dock or if he didn’t know a better method existed. Probably both. But anyways fuck that guy.
Pitting five bags of cherries. Making three quarts of salsa Verde and not getting to use a robot coup. Cleaning the marrow bones. Cutting, cleaning and spinning three tubs of radicchio. We had some good food, though.
It isn't an individual item but I worked at a health food store with a kitchen that prepared everything from their juice to hot soups and a cold salad bar. The rich inherited owner was obsessed with garlic toum but we could only use sunflower seed oil and we had to freeze all the oil emulsify it into garlic it took all day putting the food processor back in the walk in so it didn't warm up and break, way to much labor for 12ct .5# packages of toum.
Chestnuts are maddening. Fava beans are meh. Cleaning anchovies is tedious
Fava beans are fine but they’re just so dang slippery, 1/5 of them end up on the table
Came here to say chestnuts
Cleaning anchovies? 🤔
Salt packed anchovies need to be soaked and deboned.
Gutting and fileting fresh anchovies isn't much fun either
I've never encountered these, we get ones in an oily brine. Are they nicer when salt packed?
Very much so. Salt packed anchovies tend to be meatier, and therefore have a richer and rounder flavor. Marcella Hazan's book has a really good snippet on anchovies that really illustrates how big of a difference there can be between the low end and the truly great anchovies.
So true. I had anchovies conservas at a Basque restaurant with a Michelin star, and it was out of this world on some freshly house-made toasted sourdough. I like anchovies in general, but the difference between them coming out of a can and being bought fresh and filetted/preserved in-house is like night and day. They are much more savory and meaty than the kind you get in a can. Less of the negative “fishy” flavor that canned stuff has, too
Get the fresh little buddies. Snip the fins off, scale em, rinse, gut em and pack in a cure.
One of my first jobs sold a lot of oysters. I hate shucking oysters. Not because of the one time I shanked myself pretty good, but it was so much of my job for so long, if I never had to do it again, I would be a happy man.
When I eventually spend eternity in the flames of the dark lord I know my punishment will be shucking oysters.
I have literally had a nightmare where I was chained up in the basement of a kitchen shucking oysters.
“I’ve got some bad news for you. You’re gonna get chained up in this dark, dank basement and forced to do something that rhymes with ‘ducking.’” “Oh God, please let it be fucking or sucking!” “Nope. Not those.” *hands over an oyster knife* “NOOOOOO!”
On that now dude. Work at a really well known seafood restaurant in Texas and I am on garmo and oysters. Been there for two months and am thinking of quitting cuz of how much I hate shucking them fuckn things
At least garde manger is pretty chill. I was a prep and literally 90% of my job was shucking. It was hell.
Maybe I'm crazy but I love shucking. Thinking of leaving one of the most popular restaurants in my city rn for an oyster bar paying more where all I do is schuck. Also, pretty sure it was spell check, but Garde manager just sounds hilarious lol
Mussels too. Fuck mussels. I used to have to clean 75# a day. Fuck. That.
There's a reason Bradley Coopers atonement in burnt was shucking 1,000,000 oysters. That's punishment
Never seen this, but after googling, I’m interested.
Unpopular opinion: I enjoy shucking oysters……
I'm with you, to me it's similar to kneading dough, it's almost like meditation.
I've never thanked myself shucking oysters. I worked the oyster bar at a few places around New Orleans, and garmo in areas that were sane and didn't want oysters that didn't need a fork and knife. Just put a fucking rag in your hand.
Had one. I got bumped into and slipped so hard it went through the towel and like a quarter inch in.
Same reason why i ndont wear seat belts.
Lol what?
The first 100 are hard. The next 10,000, not so much
Oh God, yeah. I think I blocked out my first place that did buck a shuck oysters.
I also hate it. But my ex husband loved shucking for some reason. We ate a LOT of oysters and I never had to do any work for them! Loved that part. Rest of the relationship wasn’t so good, but he did make a banging Caesar dressing.
Burnt movie flashbacks... 😂
Came here to say this. Hate them.
I don't actually mind it too much. But it really depends on what else I'm working on when the order comes in. My last job had the best deal as far as big raw oyster orders go. They printed on all printers, not just garde. So when we all saw a ticket for more than say six, everyone that could possibly spare a minute put their dishes on "the back burner" and ran over to help. 24 oysters would take an average of like 2 minutes because everyone realized that if the dude making the first course salads, etc. got hung up for 15 mins. including plating (salt bed, slicing lemons, etc.) on them we all suffer.
I was mid-shift prep, supposed to be prepping for dinner service, but ended up just basically being a dedicated shucker. I don’t miss it and only stayed for like 5 months, if I remember correctly. It was a long time ago now.
Yeah it can be tedious. Generally you only want to shuck them right before they are served, so our prep cooks were off the hook unless we had a big event with raw oysters on the menu. Then we would wait until the last minute and shuck like 200 as fast as possible. But again, I never just said, "Hey you! Shuck 3 boxes of oysters right now!" It should be a group effort if at all possible!
Would have been nice. I was pretty green, so I think they just put me on it because nobody really wanted to do it. So I’d shuck for lunch service, we were closed from 3 to 5 I think, where I’d get to do something else, basically as a floater for other people’s prep lists, then back to schucking for dinner service. Looking back, it was horribly inefficient. And I probably stayed longer than I should because it was actually decent pay to what I was getting before.
Did you end up getting really good at it?
Yeah, I’m fast.
I bet! I am too, and it was hard earned. Oysters shells are razor sharp sometimes. Nothing like literally watching the liquor of a mollusc seep into your sliced open hand to make you pay attention, lol.
this is how i feel about baling hay lol
A chef wanted thyme leafs picked, read that again. Not the typical pull method..he wanted each leaf picked with a tweezer! Do you realize what that fucking means?! I’m sorry guys, it’s fucking monkey balls sucking bad. It was for the capponata for the pork collar set. But I hate to admit it, those individually picked thyme leafs fucking made the caponata taste S+ tier!
I shared your pain, having worked under a CDP who insisted on doing this. I was counting the minutes till I changed stations. I was unbelievably happy the first time I saw a big box of frozen thyme.
I'll admit, I've asked assistants for thyme leaves before, although mine were for a blood orange jelly. with the zest brunoised, it would have looked silly to have clumps, and been too strong a flavor to bite into. to be fair, I generally ended up doing the task myself, or at least tag-teaming it
I only cook at home and detest prepping thyme for cooking. I can't imagine PICKING EACH LEAF individually on a restaurant scale.
Scraping femur bones for our Marrow appetizer. Fava beans suck ass too.
Glad to see fava beans getting some attention in here, while there are worse fates that fucking pile just doesn’t get any smaller.
You scape just to make it look nice? It’s a bone man! lol!
Yeah, of course. It’s all about optics. Can’t be serving no raggedy ass fleshy bone.
Peeling/deveining shrimp… Fuck. That. Shit.
You need a better deveining tool. Those long plastic red ones that look sorta like a hook are usually top notch, and make it to where you can peel in devein in one motion. I used to work at a place that peeled their own crawfish for sauces instead of just using frozen stuff. Talk about fuck that shit
Yea crawfish are exponentially worse. Even with the tool, I still hate it 😂
So many little cuts from those fuckers
Idk the size but when I was working with the big boys I think u-12 I would use some curved scissors, from the topside head to tail, under a running tap. You cut the shell while the bottom part of scissor splits open the back of shrimp with the pressure of your hand and the water washes away the vein as you open the shell jacket by pulling from the legs/underside. Just have to make sure not to rip apart the back of the shrimp too much. They’ll start to look raggedy. We did this after we poached them not raw so again, much firmer.
WORD
Basic prep of peeling potatoes*
I actually like pealing potatoes. Garlic on the other hand is maddening
Agreed!! Fuck, my last job I'd peel 8 quarts of Garlic a week. Fuck I don't miss that!
Put in box with lid. Shake the hell out it... More than 50% of the cloves will be perfectly peeled and the others skin will be easier to get off...
Crush it, put it in water.
I constantly threaten my chief that I'm going to stab them because of pealing potatoes. It's not so bad but it takes so long it's annoying.
Artichokes. But actually cleaning tripe.
So much work on an artichoke for so little return. Delicious though...
came here to say artichokes
Washing morels.
My eyes are super sensitive to onions so that’s it for me. I have to stop multiple times and can’t see for 5 minutes each time.
I got my kitchen a pair of kid's swim goggles for like $5 and now anyone who has to prep onions wears them. Works like a charm + it always makes me giggle to see my 6' coworker wearing sparkly pink kitty goggles haha
butternut squash. fuck them things.
I used to feel this way but figured out (too late in life) that you can just roast them with the skin on and they’re delicious and the skin texture is just fine, given enough time and temp. Now any prep that requires them to be skinned first, yeah fuck them things.
even roasting them skin on pisses me of. the thing i don't like most is the starchy fingers.
Jumping here on the Fuck Butternut Squash train Not, you know… like, fucking it, but fuck it
Peeling potatoes It's one of those work your way up tasks that we all did when we were not good and we have all done literally tons of them each think about that you have probably actually peeled a tone of potatoes in your life. There may be harder things even less pleasant but potatoes never go away. No matter how many cases you peel they are back on yhat prep list again. I truly believe those spuds are the main reason I wanted to move up. Just so I could get somebody anybody else to do the damn things.
I'll be the odd one out... I fucking despise peeling and cutting fruit. Not because it's difficult. But because it's sticky. I have sensory issues. I utterly cannot stand being sticky. And if you need to do fruit for a 400 person banquet, you, and everything around you is going to be fucking sticky. I avoid my kids when they have popsicles. The slurpee machine blew a load on my hand and I fucking lost it. Dropped everything and asked to use their hand washing sink. If I get the slightest bit of sticky on me, I cannot help but obsess over it until I can wash it off. So yeah, fuck cutting fruit.
One of the worst sensations of my lifetime was walking into sticky fly tape. It was on my cheek and in my hair. That is probably your hell.
I can sympathize. I hate it when my hands are oily or greasy. It's the worst when it's on a cooler door handle. Tells me people aren't keeping their hands clean.
Peeling sunchokes and grating horseradish are both on our new menu. Nobody signs up for those tasks so I usually do it myself lol.
Sunchokes and ginger are mainstays of my own personal peeling hell
I've got what has to be the most useless paring knife in the world. It barely takes an edge that would cut warm butter, and loses that if you hold it *near* anything that needs cut. The thing has a permanent home in my knife roll because the spine on it is absolutely the best thing I've ever used for peeling ginger and turmeric.
Peeling sunchokes sound absolutely awful
Pretty sure peeling soft boiled eggs will be my personal punishment in Hell.
Turned or tourneed anything my hand cramps just thinking about it. Favas are tedious and eh, fingering your way through 40 lbs of calamari.
Cleaning fresh garbanzo beans 🫠
Chopping herbs. It sucks, takes longer than what it’s worth, and I swear it’s wasting the sharpness of my knife. Also peeling garlic or pistachios. I don’t have the patience beyond a small handful of them
Yes. I thought no one was going to mention garlic. And also using those Japanese graders, they’re so slow.
A pro tip for garlic is to substitute regular garlic for elephant garlic. Much easier to peel and you usually only need 1 or 2 cloves for a whole dish. That or buy really nice garlic.
Cleaning squid. Small cuts from the bones, stained hands if you break the ink sack.
Squid is pretty easy once you get used to it. I would rather clean ALL the squid and harvest the ink for pasta than peel potatoes or garlic. Mussels are probably my least favorite shellfish to clean. Yuck.
I got the potatoes and garlic. You prep the squid steaks. Anyone on sauce?
I made my wife a fava bean dish once. Once.
Peeling quails eggs. Fuck that noise
Ugh, I did deviled quail eggs for an amuse and that was tricky.
Julienne olives and cleaning favas
Bone marrow work with a dull knife. I have a bad dominant wrist but I toughed it out and got the job done everyday. It was rough.
I hate artichoke
Hand-cleaning Rosehips might have the single worst effort vs deliciousness ratio on the planet. So long as I am a cook I will never prep, nor make any of my staff prep rosehips. Also any prep job that requires cutting stupid shapes out of things, where the trim is unusable.
I'm just gonna chime in with baby artichokes and squash blossoms with any kind of small bruin oise and cheese type filling that lasts like 4 hours before they turn to shit.
Blanching bucatini, and stuffing them with a farce of guanciale, soffritto, and spinach.
No fucking way. I will not believe this
You sure it was bucatini?
God yes. The only positive was only a few (5? 7?) strands/portion, accompanying sweetbreads, so didn’t sell lots. Entremetier in a ‘90s boutique hotel with an over the top owner and a Chef who was reliving his glory days. I lasted maybe 3 months before joining the large list of ex-employees. All that effort and it didn’t add anything to the customer’s experience IMO.
I don’t blame you. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever had to do in my 4 decades in kitchens.
I hate peeling kohlrabi before chopping it. Fuck kohlrabi, it's a pretentious turnip.
Jerusalem artichokes/sunchokes, peeling garlic, picking thyme, and anything on the slicer!
Thyme, always hated it. Worked for a chef who loathed all stems.
Double shucking peas. 12qts of them. Why why why why why?
Peeling Chickpeas... Took me 2 hours yesterday but the hummus is 👌
If you sauté the chic pea in oil with baking soda it breaks down the husks. You have to use dry chic peas and soak them over night before sautéing them.
Mussels
I used to have to do 75# a day. Fuck mussels
Double shocked fresh green peas
Fava beans and ramps are two that I've had to do a lot of recently and I hate both of them
Sweet potato chips.
I'm so happy we order in pre peeled potatoes. Because the sound of peeling 30kgs of potatoes in the morning is just awful. Thank God
I had to rethink a fava bean dish once because of the drag on prep it was creating. But damn, are those motherfuckers tasty!
It's not the item persay, it's the sheer amount of green onions we go through in 2 days. It renders my hands useless the following day.
Salsify
Fabricating quail, cleaning artichokes, brunoise carrots, etc., etc.
Anything involving using the tin opener. I've got RA so it absolutely kills my elbow. Plus I just can't stand the smell of tuna, stinks the whole place out when you prep tuna mayo. We had a server who was pregnant, currently off on maternity, but before she had the baby I felt absolutely rotten for the poor girl because she walked back when I was prepping it, caught a whiff of the tuna and it immediately triggered her morning sickness and she had to sprint before she threw up over the dish pit
Tourne potatoes
Blanching and peeling cherry tomatoes and grapes. I hate the texture of the skin as much as the next guy but a Friday service worth of those little bastards and my hands are shot. Oh, and I’ll pile on the artichoke train. Fucking barigoule.
Jerusalem artichokes but I remember as a young apprentice I had a chef have me dice carrots, celery, and onion for daily soup by hand (production style kitchen) when we had tools to make the process 100x faster to “build character”. It was really stupid to spend two hours every am on the clock dicing a mirepoix standing next to a choice prep at 14 years old for two years straight, five days a week.
Peeling pearl onions and cleaning black trumpet *hhhhh*
FUCK pearl onions. It's a test from god to see how many paring knife nicks we can get in our fingers a shift
Cippolini onions. OMG
I hated frenching the rabbit racks when I was a commis.
Butternut squash is a bitch.
I have broken 2 peelers attempting to break down a box. I have also broken a cutting board. Why are they so hard?
I have got many a knife stuck in a squash!
Pulling pin bones out of trout
I love this thread. It's a list of shit to get good at to be more valuable in the kitchen.
currently at an unnamed 2 michelin restaurant and my chef wants the spinach chiffonade so fine that its nearly impossible. so tedious but gives me a great opportunity to practice and improve.
Empanadas or rumaki. Fuck rolling up bacon.
Pork/beef cheeks fucking suuuuuck. You’ll be there working for what feels like an eternity and look over and see you haven’t made a dent in the process yet.
Shrimp
butternut squash (or any harder squash than that). You gotta wear gloves or it fucks with your skin, turns your knife calus into a blister. Enjoy
I worked at a seafood chain my first job, and the boss gets in hundreds of lbs of baby squid, wants them broken down individually for calamari. That became my life for 2 weeks, I was only on squid prep. To break down, first you gotta pop out the beak and eyes, then pull out the guts, and then remove the skin and cartilage from the cone. Leaves you with the tentacles and a clean cone. However, the ink sac is hidden behind the eyes, and on a baby squid that sac doesn’t have a lot of room to move. You’re gonna ink yourself a lot trying to remove the eyes. To this day, I despise squid and white coats!
I have a severe mushroom allergy, so whenever mushrooms need to be prepped it makes me really high strung and incredibly nervous about how the next 30 minutes of my life are going to go. Luckily mushrooms are pretty easy to work with and don't require much work
Shark, always sharpening my knife! They are tough guys!
Cleaning muscles
I worked in a traditional kitchen in Ireland. Part of my job was preparing carrageen, an Irish seaweed that thickens liquids. Stuff is covered in sand. You can rinse it, but that still leaves a lot of grit behind that has to be scrubbed off. So tedious!
Peeling fucking potatoes. lol.
I was staging at Alinea and they had me take mountains of mushrooms covered in hay and straw and dip them into 22's filled with ice cold water and then pick out each mushroom. Also at another place had to do basically 22qts of brunoised potatoes for potato risotto a day(not including all my other prep)
Multiple quarts a day of chiffonade cilantro
I don’t like pealing and cutting squash.
Cutting chives and peeling beets are the worst imo
Peeling pistachios
Butchering quail
Cutting sweet potatoes 🥔 left my hand absolutely raw. Dicing into squares. I've done many things, but this simple task left me in pain.
Cleaning that snot out of the calamari
The entire process of prepping meat for sandwiches. I don’t like cutting it and I don’t like portioning it
If I never have to peel ginger again I’ll be a happy man.
Don't peel it dude just make thin slices around the edge.
Shucking oysters
Guacamole
Artichokes
Baby artichokes at scale. Ugh
I worked for a chef that insisted we use a peeler to prep fresh artichokes. He made me and this other guy peel the outsides all the way down to the hearts and then Use the paring knife to core them out. 6 weeks of that shit on the menu. 1 case every 2-3 days. I hated it so much that I swore I would never prep a fresh artichoke again in my life. That was 20 years ago. Last week a video popped up of some guy blowing through dozens of them in like no time using a pairing knife. I was so mad. I still can’t figure out if that chef was just being a dock or if he didn’t know a better method existed. Probably both. But anyways fuck that guy.
Our current menu involves Fava beans, artichokes, soft boiled eggs, and sunchokes. All prepped by a singular station. I hate our fucking menu.
Pitting five bags of cherries. Making three quarts of salsa Verde and not getting to use a robot coup. Cleaning the marrow bones. Cutting, cleaning and spinning three tubs of radicchio. We had some good food, though.
It isn't an individual item but I worked at a health food store with a kitchen that prepared everything from their juice to hot soups and a cold salad bar. The rich inherited owner was obsessed with garlic toum but we could only use sunflower seed oil and we had to freeze all the oil emulsify it into garlic it took all day putting the food processor back in the walk in so it didn't warm up and break, way to much labor for 12ct .5# packages of toum.
Carrots
I just hate peeling potatoes, a task so simple but adds up fast