Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Good advice / Kitchen Gear Beauty and Beast in One Stove
Posted by Nicki Wood on Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 8:50 AM
Restaurant professionals will chuckle at how much I enjoy cooking on this big galoot of a stove when I have the chance.
It has not one, not two, but three burning hearts, one for the griddle, one for the ovens and one for the burners. It's like a trio of mythic gods smoldering in a giant steel body. Crank it up and it roars to life like a flame-blackened Vulcan. And.I.Am.At.The.Controls. YESSSS! It's the domestic equivalent of driving a Lotus Europa.
In less than an hour, the big griddle on this ancient fixture cranked 72 golden corn cakes. Five others had to be trashed, though, because of a wicked hot spot in the griddle's center. Also, there are no indicators on the dials. You can only discern the relative temperature at which you're cooking.
To do that, you bend over and look into the flaming heart of the monster while turning the dial from high to low and back. You want medium, you sort of set it halfway. The griddle got hotter and hotter over the hour, so we cranked it down and down.
If you food service professionals can stop laughing long enough, tell me, are all food service rigs like this? Or is this one particularly eccentric?
