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The Complete Kitchen Essentials List: What Every Chef Needs?

How would you feel if you sit at a restaurant and order something and the waiter says they do not have the ingredients or tools to make that? Pretty bummed, right? To make sure your restaurant or cafe’s patrons do not have to be in this situation, you would need to invest in all the essential ingredients your kitchen needs.

But what are these kitchen essentials? That is what we will help you figure out through this blog. This blog aims to inform you on the complete kitchen essentials list from cookware you would use every day to spices that every dish needs.

A] Food Solutions That Improve Kitchen Efficiency

1. Seasoning, Spices, And Other Common Ingredients

  • Spices: Having a broad range of spices on hand helps chefs create flavourful dishes. Buying spices online from FSIPL’s own brand Spicefield to ensure top quality.
  • Seasoning: Seasoning powder adds a unique flavour profile to any dish they are added to. Adding the right amount of seasoning to any dish can transform its flavour profile into something greater. You can choose from the wide range of seasoning powders available on FSIPL’s website.
  • Taste Enhancers: They bring out the best flavour profile in a dish. Taste enhancers have a rich aroma that compliments the ingredients and balances the dish without overpowering it.
  • Marinades: When cooking proteins like chicken, mutton, or paneer, marinating them can vastly improve their taste and texture. We offer a wide variety of marinades specially created for various cuisines.

2. Crushes And Fruit Syrups

  • Crushes: Fruit crushes have a very long shelf life, ensuring you never go out of flavours to create fruity drinks to serve your customers. They are extremely versatile and time-convenient. As a leading HoReCa product manufacturer, we provide a wide range of fruit crushes for commercial kitchens in India.
  • Fruit Syrups: If you are serving drinks to your patrons, having fruit syrups on hand can be very efficient. You can create a wide range of drinks with consistent taste within a few minutes. Fruit syrups can be used to create a wide variety of cocktails and other speciality drinks.

3. Canned Foods

One of the main benefits of canned foods is their extended shelf life. Canned foods offer freshness and prevent food waste. Here are some common ingredients you should have in canned form.
  • Baby Corns:Baby corn is a staple ingredient in a number of dishes including pizza, fried rice, and curries. Having fresh baby corn year-round helps cooks maintain the taste and texture of the dishes. Canned baby corn does not lose any of its nutritional value, making it just as comparable to seasonal baby corn.
  • Fruit Cocktail: Fruit cocktails are some of the most common ingredients in desserts and salads. However, storing fruits in huge quantities is not a pragmatic solution as they can go bad relatively quickly. On the other hand, canned fruit cocktails have an extended shelf life.
  • Pineapple Tidbits: Cutting pineapples into fine pieces takes a lot of time and patience. However, in a commercial kitchen, time is money. Our pre-cut pineapple tidbits by Sunbay, make it easier for chefs to create their cuisines and save valuable time.
  • Red Cherry In Syrup: Finding high-quality cherries year-round is next to impossible. But not with Sunbay’s canned red cherry in syrup. Our canned red cherries retain their original flavours and give a fresh and sweet taste to your desserts and other dishes.
  • Baked Beans: Baked beans are a staple of any English platter. But they take an immense amount of time to cook. Canned baked beans can solve this problem as one only needs to open the can and pour it.

4. Gravy Mixes

If your restaurant, hotel, or cafe sees a lot of footfall, using gravy mixes can be an efficient way to save a chef’s time without compromising quality. Some of the common gravy mixes that your kitchen needs to have are:
  • Tomato Makhani Gravy Base: Made with the perfect blend of tomatoes, cashew nuts, sunflower oil, spices and condiments, Sunbay’s tomato makhani gravy base can be used to cook, tangy and flavourful dal makhani, paneer tikka masala, aloo mutter, mushroom mutter makhani, and more, in no time.
  • White Gravy Base: This thick gravy base is perfect for creating creamy koftas, korma, and malai dishes. As you do not have to create the base from scratch, it saves a lot of time and effort on the part of the chef.
  • NoNG – Red and Yellow Gravy Base: If your restaurant specialises in vegetarian and Jain dishes like butter paneer, masala mix veg, and paneer makhanwala, our no onion, no garlic gravy base is the perfect ingredient. As Indian gravies require a number of ingredients, using a premixed base helps to reduce waste and saves time.
  • Sambhar: Create steaming hot, authentic sambhar in no time with our sambhar mix. It has the perfect blend of all the key ingredients like lentils, pumpkin, onion, tomato, and jaggery.
  • Dal Makhani Gravy: Create tasty dal makhani and dal fry that holds a rich Indian flavour with Sunbay Dal Makhani gravy. It is ready to cook, meaning, chefs can save time and effort. This dal makhani mix has lentils, and rajma and has been seasoned with special spices.

B] Other Tools and Gadgets That Kitchen Needs.

In the above section, we have mentioned all the essential items that a commercial kitchen needs to cook authentic, tasteful food in less time. However, to cook these foods, you need to have the right tools and gadgets, without which every kitchen is incomplete. What are those? Let’s have a look.

1. Utensils and Prep Tools

  • Non-Stick Frying Pan: Non-stick frying pans are a kitchen must-haves. Common dishes like omelettes and cooking techniques like searing are best done on non-stick frying pans.
  • Saucepan: Saucepans are the perfect cookware for cooking with sauces or gravy like pasta, beans, and curries. Not having saucepans can cause several efficiency issues in the kitchen. Also, saucepans are perfect to handle and manoeuvre when cooking smaller portions.
  • Chef’s Knives: A good chef’s knife is arguably one of the best kitchen tools for a chef. A good chef’s knife will be used for preparing about 90% of the dishes.

2. Gadgets and Appliances

  • Oven: Commercial convection ovens are essential for cafes offering freshly baked products like croissants, breads, and biscuits.
  • Grinder and Mixer: Grinder and mixer are crucial parts of the cooking process in any restaurant. They are used to create gravy mixes, paste, puree, etc.

Conclusion

A kitchen needs several tools to function efficiently. These include cookware like pots and pans to crucial ingredients like spices, seasonings, and marinades. Those, as mentioned above, are essential kitchen tools that every restaurant, cafe, or hotel needs. Of course, there are several other things that you will need to make sure your kitchen is ready for anything. However, the above-mentioned items are a good starting point.

If you wish to take your HoReCa business to the next level, contact Food Service India Pvt. Ltd. today! We are one of the leading food products manufacturers catering to commercial kitchens throughout the country. We also help kitchens by creating customised menus and training kitchen staff.