A professional kitchen worker is responsible for a variety of roles. The primary duty of a chef is to plan menus, develop recipes, and oversee the preparation of dishes. They must order supplies, accept deliveries in the morning, and check their freshness and flavor. Chefs and cooks use a variety of cooking techniques, such as grills, ovens, roasters, and stoves.
Preparation workers are responsible for washing, cutting, cleaning, distributing, and preparing food for use in cooking processes. In larger restaurants, there may be an executive chef who manages the kitchen and its staff. This includes supervising and training staff, planning menus, managing the culinary budget, and sometimes shopping. To be an executive chef, you need previous kitchen experience as well as good management skills to ensure that the kitchen runs efficiently.
The line cook is responsible for preparing vegetables, soups, starches, and eggs. Larger establishments may employ several chefs to work at this station. A cook would be in charge of making the soups and a legume would be in charge of preparing any vegetable dish. The kitchen brigade system was developed by Escoffier and is still used today in many restaurants.
The dishwasher is one of the most difficult jobs in the kitchen. This position ensures that there are clean plates, glasses, cutlery, pots and pans available for both kitchen and service equipment. The butcher chef is responsible for preparing meat and poultry before delivering them to their respective stations. They may also handle fish and seafood preparations.
With the introduction of new technologies, the modern kitchen brigade system has become smaller than it was before. A floater is a member of the kitchen team who replaces as needed in every station rather than having a specific job. If the chef is an incompetent tyrant who “knows nothing”, then it's time to find a new kitchen to work in. In each kitchen, there are a number of different job functions that make the kitchen run smoothly to deliver orders in a timely manner. In any commercial kitchen, tasks such as preparing ingredients and cooking menu items are delegated to a body of cooks and kitchen assistants.
The guiding principle of any good kitchen design is to maximize the flow of food and people who cook from one area to another and within each area itself. The pastry wizards have the sweetest job in the kitchen and are in charge of the desserts and pastries on the menu. The formal brigade defines the functions of the kitchen precisely but even in informal restaurants station cooks follow the instructions of the main cooks who pass on their culinary knowledge as they go. The second-in-command in a kitchen is known as subchef de cuisine and has great responsibility for daily operations.
