Burnt 40 portions of sauce on a Friday night service

I was working the sauté station at a busy spot in Portland last summer. We had this rich tomato cream sauce that needed constant stirring or it'd scorch on the bottom. One rush hit and I got buried under tickets, forgot about the pot for maybe 3 minutes. Came back to find the bottom completely black and a smoky haze filling the line. I panicked, scraped the burnt part off, then added fresh cream and stock to stretch the good bits above. We made it through service with no one complaining, but I learned to set a timer on my phone for anything that needs attention every 60 seconds. Has anyone else had to recover a ruined sauce in the middle of a rush?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris_jones8917d ago

Panicked and did the exact same thing last winter with a béarnaise at my old gig in Seattle. I had this beautiful batch going on the double boiler and got slammed with a six-top all ordering the filet at once (of course). Left it for maybe five minutes and came back to a chunky, separated mess that looked like scrambled eggs. I whisked in a splash of cold water and a tiny bit of lemon juice real fast, then strained it through a fine mesh sieve to get the curdled bits out. It saved the sauce for the rest of the night but my heart was pounding for the next hour.

robert_roberts17d ago

The beauty of this kind of thing is that it applies to so much more than just cooking. I've noticed (a pattern, really) that in our regular lives we get so caught up in the rush of things that we ignore the little warning signs until everything is on fire. A timer for that 60 second check is basically a cheap insurance policy against panic mode. It's like checking your pockets before leaving the house or doing a quick read of an email before sending it to your boss. We all think we can handle it in our heads, but a simple reminder saves you from having to scrape the burnt bits off of a whole lot of problems later.