Topic · Working in a Restaurant

Setting Up Your Kitchen Prep Station

A clean and organized commercial kitchen prep station featuring a central wooden cutting board with chopped shallots and chives, a chef's knife, prep bowls with diced carrots, celery, and garlic cloves, and a magnetic knife strip on the left wall. — An organized and clean kitchen prep station ready for cooking, featuring mis en place vegetables and a single wooden cutting board.

Before cooking any meal, large or small, it’s important that you properly set up your kitchen prep station. This undertaking will ensure that you have all the necessary tools on hand to make the cooking experience as smooth, efficient and pleasant as possible.

Personal workflow

Consider your personal workflow. If you’re right-handed, chances are that you’ll want your kitchen workflow to move from left to right. For example, you could have your sink on the far left to wash food items, then the cutting board situated immediately to the right, and finally a refuse bowl to discard food remnants at the far right. Always look for ways to make your kitchen workflow easier and faster, as this will enhance the preparation experience as well as help maximize safety.

Cutting boards

Be sure to have a wooden one for vegetables and a polypropylene one for meats, an important measure that will help avoid cross-contamination and potential foodborne illnesses.

Knives

To cut your foods, you will need to have at least 3 different types of knives on hand, as well as a sharpening steel or whetstone to maintain optimal knife sharpness.

The three basic knives are:

a chef’s knife: used for cutting large things like thick-skinned vegetables and meats.
a paring knife: used for cutting small foods such as fruits.
a serrated bread knife: used for bread or slippery skinned produce such as tomatoes

Setting Up Your Kitchen Prep Station — Chef knife

Don’t forget to keep a knife block or magnetic strip on hand so that you can safely store your knives after usage and disinfecting.

All-purpose scraper

An all-purpose scraper is another essential tool to help transfer cutting board items to wherever they need to go.

Spoons

If you’ll be working with liquids or need to liquefy foods, keeping several sized spoons, a blender and/or a food processor on hand will also help.

Bowls

Bowls are another key prep station element, and at a minimum, you need to have a counter-top refuse bowl and a nested bowl set. Having a refuse bowl prevents you from having to walk to the trash can at regular intervals and helps prevent contamination that can result from repeated trash can contact. The nested bowl set provides a compact way to have several bowl sizes that can meet the vast majority of your on the spot storage needs.

Frying/sauté pans and pots

Have at least two different sized frying/sauté pans and two varied sized pots with lids (all placed a reasonable distance away from the cutting boards since you won’t need them right away) to help with any frying, sautéing, boiling or steaming needs.

Lidded storage containers

Finally, having a few lidded storage containers for food you plan to use later is always a plus.

Staying clean

For food safety purposes, always keep a spray bottle with a bleach solution on hand to quickly disinfect your prep utensils. You can attach small hand towels to your belt loop or pockets to facilitate quick hand or countertop wiping, and should also have paper towels on hand as a backup. Masking tape helps promote safety and efficiency by allowing you to label your leftovers with food name and date prepared.

Seasonings

Don’t forget to keep your favorite seasonings on hand so that you can immediately infuse your prepped products with flavor before sending them on to be cooked, baked or chilled.

Writing material

Along with tape, other great organization tools are a pen, marker, and notebook, all of which allow you to jot down recipe ideas or modifications at a moment’s notice.