Natural gas appliances have long played an important role in fueling American holiday wintertime traditions, but you may not realize how vital natural gas is for professional chefs hoping for a successful winter season at their restaurants.
Cooking with natural gas isn’t just what chefs prefer. It’s a vital tool for ensuring that every dish that goes out is perfectly cooked and finished exactly how the chef imagined it. Let’s turn up the burner and dive into all the reasons why natural gas appliances are better for restaurants in the winter.
Natural gas appliances provide lightning-fast response speeds
Wintertime recipes often revolve around unique soups, sauces and gravies – three types of foods that are incredibly challenging to cook without the fast response speed of a gas burner. Immediate heat upon ignition means saucepans can get up to temperature quickly, and since gas burners also cool down faster, it’s not a problem at all to go from a rolling boil down to a simmer with the switch of a knob.
Temperature control can make or break liquid dishes, as persistent heat can quickly thicken a sauce from creamy to lumpy and a soup that heats too slowly won’t get a chance to reduce. Appliances that swiftly respond to a chef’s needs help to eliminate runny failures.
Precise temperatures and greater control
There are two important reasons why culinary schools train chefs to cook on natural gas appliances: temperature precision and temperature control.
Any professional chef will tell you that managing temperature is key to producing a consistent, delicious finished product. Cooking with gas makes it easier to make sure new winter recipes come out the same every single time.
Unleash all the cookware
Induction stovetops perform well when working with perfectly flat cookware, but what about pots and pans that are specifically designed to be utilized over an open flame? From the wok to the comal, many cuisines rely on round or non-flat cookware to prepare meals – and these unique tools simply won’t work without the type of open flame created with natural gas appliances.
For adding international flare to your winter menu, sometimes only gas will do the trick.
Stay ready for winter storms
For restaurants located in harsh winter climates, natural gas appliances provide a degree of dependability when inclement weather hits and power becomes unreliable. Chefs with a natural gas kitchen can continue to cook and serve diners even during an outage, which isn’t just good for business but also good for customers who may not have a means to cook without electricity at home.
Cook faster, serve faster
In the foodservice business, time is always of the essence. Natural gas appliances heat faster and hotter for shorter cooking times. Shorter cooking times translate to meals getting out quicker and tables turning over sooner.
For a smaller restaurant that can’t seat guests outdoors during the winter, shorter wait times from ordering to eating could potentially mean open tables for diners you might otherwise have to turn away due to space.
Gas up the patio
Natural gas isn’t just better for cooking winter recipes, it’s also a more affordable and effective method for heating outdoor dining spaces. Restaurants that are connected to natural gas see wintertime benefits that extent well beyond the kitchen, with the potential to set up outdoor heaters in areas that would otherwise unable to generate revenue during the colder months.
Explore natural gas appliances for your business
Outfit your foodservice business with the natural gas appliances your talented chefs need to create and perfect winning wintertime dishes and recipes your patrons will love. Cooking with natural gas produces a superior, tastier finished product that leads to happier customers and stronger businesses.