French food has always been the gold standard in fine dining. Over the years the fusion of French cuisine with flavors from around the world has bred a culture of ingenuity and dynamism that helped perpetuate French style cooking as the center for culinary excellence. But recently some trends have …
Read More »Menu Trends: Restaurants Are Introducing A South American Super Crop
This is a story about how an Incan super crop is starting to take over health food stores and trendy restaurants in the U.S. The rest of the world is already on board with this mysterious super plant; we’re just now catching up. What’s so great about this plant? Well, …
Read More »A Review Of Klick Kitchen By Chef Forfeng
The following is a great review of Klick Kitchen by an industry insider with a lot more personal experience in the food service industry than I have. I came across Klick Kitchen last year and while the concept was intriguing, the price at the time was not. Since then they …
Read More »Asian Carp Have Only One Predator: Restaurants
Invasive species take over new habitats so quickly because they usually have no natural predators in their new home, allowing them to reproduce quickly and overwhelm native populations competing for the same food. The latest foreign invader to make headlines in the U.S. is Asian Carp, a fast-moving, quick-breeding intruder …
Read More »Tonight’s Special: Pork a la Petri
Late last month it was announced that scientists in Holland have successfully grown pork meat in a petri dish. The meat was developed from special cells called myoblasts that are specifically programmed to repair muscles in a live animal. If they are left in a super rich broth of nutrients, …
Read More »Identifying Commercial Refrigeration Thermostats
There are two types of temperature controls used in commercial refrigeration: 1. Thermostatic: either an Air Sensing type or Evaporator Coil Sensing type 2. Low pressure control Let’s start with thermostatic type controls. An air-sensing thermostat does just that: it senses air temperature. The control sensor tube is usually mounted in the …
Read More »Boulder Restaurants Getting Some National Respect
Boulder area restaurants are garnering some respect on the national scene, including a write-up in the Wall Street Journal. As you may know, The Back Burner is based in Boulder, so we took it as a great sign that some of our favorite restaurants in our own backyard have been …
Read More »Fixing Commercial Gas Equipment: No Gas To The Burner
If you’re not getting gas to the burner on gas equipment, you can check several things in a process of elimination to determine what the problem is. First things first: check the gas regulator. Gas regulators are directional, which means gas will not flow if they are installed backwards. Check the …
Read More »Fixing Commercial Ovens: Not Cooking Evenly
All the thermostats have a capillary tube with a bulb attached to the end of it. This is the part that senses the temperature in the oven. The bulb is attached to clips inside the oven. If the bulb is not put back in the same place, i.e. it’s just …
Read More »Fixing Commercial Ovens: Trouble Maintaining Temperature
This is usually a thermostat problem. When you set the thermostat at a set temperature and it does not reach that point it may be one of two problems: 1. The thermostat may be defective. 2. The thermostat may be out of calibration. To check the calibration get a thermometer that you …
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