Knowledge Base > Eric Wynkoop - Open Office Hours

Open Office Hours

Eric Wynkoop - Open Office Hours

This event was on Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 2:00 pm Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Eric Wynkoop in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to ask anything – from cooking techniques to co… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

What are some best practices for living small and prepping food?

— Ted Kowalczyk

Answer:

I love it 50% kitchen. Just my kind of home. We did this as part of our commitment to reducer carbon Footprints. All right, you know kudos to you Ted and your wife for taking on the challenge of living small. Um, I appreciate that I have certainly stayed in homes and visited homes of the tiny house sort of size and you know have worked with people in kitchens that were really really small probably. um in some cases as I'm thinking about this even smaller perhaps than your approximately 100 square foot kitchen, and I'll tell you You know one thing that I like about small kitchens is their potential efficiency because you don't have to take many steps in any direction in order to get what you need to get and go to where you want to go. So, you know best practices I think are going to Center on on storage and I use this word broadly for me, you know, when you know, I'm cooking and prepping I think about storage as places to Stage food that are somewhere Midstream right in the cooking process and you know in professional kitchens. we often have what's called a speed Rack or multiple speed racks, which are basically racks with these little brackets that accommodate sheet pans and a standard speed rack will accommodate a full sheet pan, you know, which is about Something like 26 by 18 inches, you pretty good size. But you can also accommodate half sheet pans, you know turn sideways and not that I'm encouraging you to install a speed Rack in your tiny home, but you kind of using that approach as inspiration to create something that works for your setting whether that's you know, a racking system that will just accommodate a half sheet pan, or maybe even a quarter sheet pan, you know, depending on how much food you need to cook and You know, otherwise, you know having flat surfaces around so that you can just set things down on become very important in my experience. And you know, this is true of some of the smaller commercial kitchens certainly bigger than 100 square feet, but nonetheless relatively small commercial kitchens where I've been part of a team that has fed, you know upwards of a thousand people at a time and you know in those times that's sort of organization right places to to put sheet pans, which I find to be probably the most efficient way to store food generally. Okay has come into play and so I'm trying to Sort of transfer right that experience those systems on a smaller scale to your setting and so think about a racking system that will accommodate standardly available sheet pans in your case half sheet pans, or maybe even quarter sheet pans and then you know, or otherwise, you know flat surfaces, okay, but I would I would imagine that you could have some fun, you know from an interior design perspective in designing such a system that will bring a lot of satisfaction enjoy to your cooking and I'm, you know, very happy that that you pose this question. It's very interesting and gets me thinking about some added efficiencies in my own kitchen here at home. Thank you.
Eric Wynkoop

Eric Wynkoop

Director of Culinary Instruction

rouxbe.com