Prep Work: The Real Story

By OWEN MORRIS

It is fun to show a restaurant’s kitchen in the weeds. Gordon Ramsey has made a particularly lucrative career out of it. But in a well-put-together kitchen, such chaos is a rare occurrence. That’s because of prep work.

Prep work is rarely written about or shown on television because it tends to be repetitive and boring. That’s why I like this article, “A day in the life of a prep cook” from the Courier-Express in DuBois, Pennsylvania. The writing style is tedious — exactly like the work it’s describing.

The writer was assigned to cover a woman named Dorothy Hunt.

In the 25 years she’s been employed in this line of work, Hunt said she hasn’t seen many changes other than the “new helpers” who are hired to assist her. Hunt, the assistant prep cook, and the person assigned to the salad bar that day are a team.

Instead of trying to twist Hunt’s job into something it’s not, the writer covered her in a straightforward manner; whether it was on purpose or accidentally, the piece conveys the monotony of prep work.

To a journalist who has never worked in the back of the house, a busy kitchen can look like pandemonium. It’s often described that way but it rarely is. In reality, it’s usually unceremonious prep work for several hours followed by — on busy nights — very controlled chaos for a couple of hours. The line cook may run to the walk-in, but he or she knows exactly what to grab in there, and the grill cook may curse his or her head off, but it’s just as likely to be from jawing with the other cooks as it is from burning a chicken breast.