— Diane Kirschner

Uh, yes. Uh, you know, we can use, um, the practice of par cooking vegetables, for example. I'll, I'll take that as example. Um, where, uh, if you, and, and I'm gonna go directly to one of our assignments, and that is, if you have broccoli, and let's say it takes you, um, uh, six minutes to cook the broccoli, depends on, on the size, right, uh, you can, you can par cook or partially cook that product through steaming or simmering ahead of time. You can shock it, which means to chill it in ice water, and then hold it until you get closer to service time. Or you can add that back to the pan. You can finish it by sauteing, you can finish it by immersion, uh, method through simmering again, for example, through steaming again. But at that point, the cooking time is gonna be much shorter. You should be able to, um, really finish the cooking within a couple of minutes. So you're gonna cut down on the cooking time considerably, so you can start to, you know, um, uh, align it with the other food items that are all coming together to be done at the same time. So that's one method that we use, okay, is to par cook or partially cooked, uh, uh, certain foods. Um, other items, uh, can be entirely cooked ahead of time. And, um, then all you need to do is to, uh, reheat it and then hold it at that temperature. So all you do is pull it outta the oven or pull it off the stove top, and then serve it. Um, they can be in a, uh, oven to table container, or, uh, if you have it in a service bowl, um, you know, for, uh, you know, ready for the table, um, you can put some foil over that. Uh, and then just hold it, uh, in a, uh, in an oven at the lowest temperature, um, you know, for as long, you know, for an hour or something like that, until service time. And, um, you know, if your oven, uh, low temperature is still kind of high, let's say, you know, 170 degrees Fahrenheit like my oven at home, they consider heating up the oven, then turning it off, and then placing, uh, food items in there to hold, you know, on a, so that as a temperature falls, it's gonna be much cooler. Okay? Um, so those are a couple things that you can do. And then the third thing, uh, is practice. Um, cooking, like any other activity really, uh, is gonna be based upon practice and repetition. And, you know, I always think about, um, you know, these analogies in music or sports, um, if you're trying to get better playing an instrument, you know, you don't just play it once and then expect to be really good at it. You want to do that many, many times. And depending on how good you want to be, you need to adjust your practice accordingly. Uh, same thing with basketball or some other activity. Uh, you need to, uh, practice, uh, those, those layups or those jump shots, uh, until you're really good at it. And, uh, cooking is really no different in that respect. Okay? So have patience with yourself, uh, and go through, uh, you know, this activity of repetition, uh, which is going to get you there.