“Scales are almost as important as knives,” says Scott Dolich, executive chef for The Bent Brick and Park Kitchen in Portland, OR. They play a critical role in preparing and serving meals, of course, and make the kitchen more efficient.
There are many kinds of kitchen scales, so we asked chefs to weigh in with tips for choosing the best ones for your restaurant.
Scales are primarily used for three purposes in a commercial kitchen:
1. Cooking: “We require our cooks to have their own 5-pound scales so they can accurately follow recipes,” Dolich notes. The Bent Brick alone has five of these scales in its kitchen.
2. Baking: Baking is an exact science and bakers prefer metric scales because they’re more accurate. “Most companies make scales that do both pounds and ounces to kilograms and grams,” says Jean Claude Berger, a retired pastry chef. Keep the baker’s scale separate from others so it doesn’t get overused.
3. Receiving: “You need a large bulk scale dedicated to checking in orders,” says Kevin Callaghan, chef/owner of Acme Food & Beverage Co. in Carrboro, NC. “It doesn’t have to be extremely exact — it just needs to be close enough so if you’re paying for 31.6 pounds of tuna, you can verify that’s what you’re getting.” He adds with a laugh, “There’s an old adage that if you have a scale and use it the first time you take an order in, vendors will never try to rip you off because they know you check.”
Kitchen scales come with all kinds of options, but our chefs recommend looking for these fundamental features:
Doing a little research and investing in the best equipment you can afford ensures your kitchen scales and your food will always measure up.