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My old sous told me to stop tasting with the same spoon and I ignored him for 2 years | Chefs - Hub Chatter

My old sous told me to stop tasting with the same spoon and I ignored him for 2 years

So back when I was working the line at this Italian spot in Providence, my sous chef kept telling me to use a clean spoon every single time I tasted a sauce, and I thought he was just being a pain in the ass about dishes. I mean, who has time to grab a new spoon 30 times during a dinner rush, right? I brushed it off for almost 2 years until we had a health inspection in March and the guy flagged our tasting station. Turns out dipping the same spoon back in the pot is basically a petri dish move, and I had been doing it on every station I ran. We got a warning, not a fine, but the chef chewed me out in front of everyone. Now I keep a cup of spoons on my station like he told me to from day one. Any of you ever blow off advice from an old head and then eat crow later?

1 comments

1 Comment

claire37821d ago

I mean, the double dip thing is real but I gotta push back a little on the health inspector part of your story. Dipping a spoon back into a pot you're actively cooking on the stove is not the same as the stuff that actually gets flagged, because the pot is at a temp that kills most of what's on the spoon anyway, so places do skate by on that for years. Where you really get nailed is tasting off a spoon and then putting it back into something that's already done and sitting at room temp, like a sauce you already pulled or a cold prep item, because now you're just adding your mouth germs to food that won't get cooked again. Maybe it's just me but I feel like your sous was less worried about bacteria in the pot and more about the habit crossing over to the cold station, which it clearly did since you said you were doing it everywhere. Also I don't think a warning really means the inspector "flagged" it in a formal way, that usually means they just told you to fix it on the spot, so it sounds like your chef was more mad about the principle than any actual violation on paper. Either way though, keeping the cup of spoons is the right call and way less gross, so no argument there.