Every chef will attest that after the essential restaurant cooking equipment or catering equipment in any commercial kitchen is a great knife and a great pan! Commercial kitchen ware can make the crucial difference not only in the quality of food produced but its presentation.
Small ware is referred to all the tool components of a restaurant supplies and includes serving ware, tableware, cookware, kitchenware, crockery, cutlery and all related accessories including display-ware. This article will attempt to outline the major differences between commercial cookware and the domestic varieties.
Commercial cookware has major advantages over its more inferior counterparts in the domestic arena but what it suffers least from, surprisingly, is price! Below are some of the major differences between the 2 categories of cookware:
Price- As with all products in the market, commercial cooking equipment or catering equipment price varies with quality. Customers seeking a high quality domestic cookware often tend to spend $100’s on cookware that often is advertised heavily with ‘elaborate’ features that have no real impact on the quality of the product. Often naïve consumers get duped by fancy names such as “stone-ware”, “Hard anodised”, “Red Dot” etc. and are willing to pay a handsome price for these gimmicks. Commercial cookware, being used by chefs around the globe is often more subtly advertised without the need for fancy names. As such though the quality of the product is far superior to the more pricy ‘high quality’ domestic cookware, the price is often very reasonable.
Range- Chefs often use different pots and pans to cook different items, the variety in the sizes only of frypans or stockpots for instance in the commercial arena is vast! In addition, the types of pans and pots available for chefs are also again vast (from crepe pans, to blinis pans, to sauté and saucepans) while the materials of the cookware are also huge (aluminium, copper, various grades of stainless steel, non-stick (though rare) etc.)
Quality- Commercial cookware by nature is heavily used not only being exposed to hotter temperatures from commercial restaurant kitchen equipment, but exposed for longer to extremes of temperature, is washed more often and is handled far more roughly than domestic cookware. All this means that commercial cookware is by nature built tough as nuts! In addition, commercial cookware is also made far more ergonomically (in terms of size, weight, and design) to cater for constant usage.
Versatility- Commercial cookware is designed to be used in a variety of situations and with a range of commercial cooking equipment. Chefs would often fry something then put the pan onto a salamander or indeed even an oven. Similarly, pans or pots can end up passing through several stages of the cooking procedure through ovens, combi-ovens, steamers, woks etc. this means that most commercial cookware is designed very robustly and with this versatility in mind.
The simple conclusion we can reach from the above is that commercial cooking equipment is far better in terms of price, range, quality and versatility and hence an attractive alternative to the often overpriced, over hyped domestic cookware. Budding home chefs and home cooks would be advised to shop carefully and choose commercial cookware for long term and short term success.
To get the best deals on all your commercial catering equipment and kitchen supplies of top grade commercial quality contact Australian Catering Equipment Supplies. Though our name says it all – we have the widest range of commercial cookware and small ware to give your business or home the touch of quality and style for the finer things in life!