Get in sink: Every kitchen workstation should have one to meet task at hand

Nation's Restaurant News, March 18, 2002 by Gary Bensky

It's bewildering to see kitchens with workstations that don't contain sinks. We need a sink at some stage of almost every task performed in a kitchen.

Are you about to clean 30 tenderloins, ribeyes or shells of beef? You'll be draining the Cryovac bags in the sink. Do you need to fillet that gorgeous halibut, salmon or swordfish the fishmonger just dropped at your back door? You most certainly will have to rinse the fish in the sink before carefully filleting it. Are you ready to start preparation of that beautiful gazpacho? The first place the vegetables go will be the sink.

From baking potatoes to making a mirepoix to shocking blanched vegetables to prepping chickens, ducks and turkeys, all these activities require a visit to the sink. Even when we get cut or burned, the sink is the first place we head. It's also the most common chili tank for cooling down our flavorful stocks, soups and stews.

We wash our hands scores of times throughout the course of the day. Anyone who believes that latex gloves eradicate the problems of cross contamination and the spread of pathogens is mistaken. Unless the gloves are changed after each food is touched, the possibility of contamination is still present. And we all know such a procedure is hardly the case. I have seen gloved cooks working an la minute pasta station and reaching in and out of a mise en place that contains an array of cooked and raw vegetables as well as raw shrimp, cooked chicken and other protein products -- all with the same pair of gloves on!

Any cook will gladly give up 12 inches to 15 inches of refrigerated storage in exchange for a much-needed sink. In new or renovated kitchens, the health code has a sink requirement. Hand sinks must be located every 15 feet and, in many cases, may be required every 10 feet.

Beyond the number of hand sinks that a kitchen should have, the issue is the appropriateness of the size and depth of a sink for a given task. If you work any station that has a lot of vegetables to be prepped, you quickly will realize how useful it is to have a sink with a recessed inner rim that is the inside dimension of a hotel pan. Such a design enables the chef to place a 6-inch perforated pan on the lip of the sink, making it easier to pour scalding water when he is blanching vegetables, pasta, eggs and other foods and then rinsing with cold water and draining.

Another useful sink design dedicated to the fish-cleaning station is one that contains a removable basket. The fish sink can be a shallow one that is 6 inches to 8 inches deep but should be extra wide, perhaps 36 inches, to accommodate whole fish about to be filleted. The distance from front to back of the entire sink should be 30 inches, including 15 inches of sink compartment and 15 inches of cutting-board surface for filleting, skinning and portioning the fish. That space allows the chef to collect the trimmings in the sink to be rinsed and used for a delicious fish fumet or stock and, finally, to be turned into a variety of complex soups and sauces. A spray rinse hose similar to one you would use at the dish machine prerinse sink completes the package.

One of the most important sink-related innovations was brought to the marketplace by an institutional chemical salesman named W.R. Cantrell. Cantrell, who for 30 years had witnessed the drudgery and high employee turnover associated with the most loathsome task in any kitchen, pot washing, decided that a better way could be found. Everyone before him had focused on ways to wash the pots faster, but that was not the answer for Cantrell. His idea was not to do the washing faster, but to do it without expensive, unreliable labor and to do it better. Low and behold, he introduced the Metcraft Power Soak.

Since 1987 operators have been able to bring backup to 75 percent of the labor dollars spent at the pot sink and redirect those dollars into food preparation. By using water jets to create turbulent agitation in the soak sink and non-foaming cleaning agents, all the pot washer has to do is rinse and sanitize.

Other companies offer similar units. They require just 4 more inches from front to back and are made to order according to your particular needs. It is important, however, to make the soak sink as large as possible so that the largest number of pots and pans can fit in the sink at one time in order to reap all of the benefits offered.

Sinks that are appropriate to the task and well placed and sized can help facilitate safe and efficient production in every department of a well-run professional kitchen.