À la carte vs Batch Cooking: What’s Right for Your Restaurant

When running a successful restaurant, it’s important to prioritize the time of your cooks, your waitstaff, and your managers. Therefore, you need to think carefully about how you can quickly and easily prepare dishes for your customers without sacrificing the quality of your food. In general, the two options available are batch cooking and à la carte cooking. Which one is best for your restaurant?

Comparing Batch Cooking and À La Carte Cooking

So, what are the differences between batch cooking and à la carte cooking?

Batch cooking is ideal for dishes you will cook often. For example, if you run a seafood restaurant, fish, shrimp and other shellfish will be a big part of your menu. Steaming these items in bulk before the start of service can help save time since these are items that will be frequently ordered. By steaming food in advance, your kitchen can get ahead at the beginning of the night without sacrificing quality.

À la carte cooking is ideal for dishes that need to be prepared as they are ordered, or for dishes that are not ordered as frequently. If certain menu items do not require a tremendous amount of preparation, then you might make them à la carte without losing a lot of time.

No matter what cooking method you use, preserving food quality is the main goal. That way, you keep your customers and clients happy.

Steaming Food: What Are the Benefits?

Steam cooking handles both batch and à la carte cooking for restaurants. There are several key benefits of employing steam cooking in your restaurant, ranging from quality to ease of use.

For starters, steaming food in bulk or à la carte allows operators to customize their cooking methods to meet their needs. Cooking with steam retains moisture, avoiding overly cooked or dry food. Additionally, steam cooking preserves the color and flavor of foods, maintaining the aesthetic appeal, taste, and nutritional value of the ingredients used. Unlike cooking over an open flame, operators aren’t as likely to burn their food if they use steam. Finally, steam cooking saves on labor, as staff doesn’t need to stand over the steamer as the food cooks, and instead focus on other important tasks elsewhere in the kitchen.

There are several types of steaming equipment available to incorporate this into your restaurant, and Crown Steam offers a full line to handle it all.

Use Crown Steam To Help You With Your Restaurant

No matter what type of cooking method you use, à la carte or batch, steam cooking from Crown is an ideal solution. If you opt for bulk or batch cooking, à large, high-capacity commercial food steamer steam cooks large volumes of food at the same time. On the other hand, a smaller, countertop steamer, for example, cooks smaller amounts of food for à la carte dishes. That way, you take up less space and use less energy for lesser volumes of food.

Chefs prefer Crown Steam’s solutions because it makes life in the commercial kitchen easier through high efficiency, faster cooking speeds, and consistent production. Steam cooking solutions available from Crown Steam are durable, reliable, and versatile. Whatever your restaurant’s menu demands, there’s a commercial steam cooking solution design to meet those needs.