Ice, more often than not, has a notoriously bad reputation at restaurants. But, no matter what you do, ice is essential to your restaurant and not just for drinks, but surprisingly also for cooking operations.
Ice in Displays
It’s no surprise that most beverages are served with ice (and the ice cube matters too—check back on past blog posts for more on that), but using ice as part of displays in your restaurant is a way to catch the attention of your customers. Especially in seafood-based restaurants, displaying seafood on ice is a great way to show your customers that your food is fresh and it’s visually appealing. Ice can also be on display in salad bars to keep everything fresh.
Cooking With Ice
Using ice when cooking is more common than you might think and adds great benefits to your food. Ice can be used for storing food and cooling blanched (removing skin from certain foods) vegetables. Cooling vegetables in ice makes them crunchy and crisp and preserves color and texture. This is perfect when serving vegetable dishes to your customers. Ice can also protect the flavor of a sauce and introduce air to certain drinks. Emulsion is also popular when cooking. Basically, you use ice to help combine liquids that normally wouldn’t mix together (oil and water, etc.).
Ice can be used for exponentially more than just chilling a drink and will make the quality of your food and ultimately your restaurant better and more sophisticated.
