One day a week we have a burger special, and to manage the "overwhelming" amount of orders, my co-worker will pre cook Burger patties and let them sit in water till someone orders one. By overwhelming I mean 10 burgers per hour (not a lot). I've never said anything to the cook about it, because I'm just a line cook, it's not really my job to do so, and this lady would bite my head off for telling her what to do. I sent this same picture to my manager to which I received no reply, and I extremely doubt the manager talked to the cook about it. If I ask my manager about it, I guarantee their response will be, "it's fine". Is this violating food and safety laws? what would you guys do in this situation?
by devthebabe
34 Comments
If that’s lukewarm water in room temp, your co-worker is a fucking idiot.
Is the water being regularly changed out, and is it heated and held at a temperature outside of the danger zone? If not, then yes it’s a violation. If your grill can’t handle 10 burgers per hour as a “special”, idk what to tell you
Do the people who receive wet burgers not complain?
Room temp? Absolutely. If it was on a flat top and up to temp it might be ok. But that’s not ok.
That is wrong on so many levels. The quality of the burger, aside from the health aspect.
They need locking up tbh
Come on. Really?
Cooked food being held for service needs to be held above 140°f. If this is above that it’s technically fine as long as the product is being rotated.
With that said it’s disgusting in terms of quality and based on the fact that the burgers are haphazardly tossed in there I’d guess the temp is not high enough and the cook is not rotating meaning the bottom burger will sit there for a long time.
Can you name the place so I don’t accidentally eat there? I don’t want to get sick because the cook is incompetent.
how do people come up with this shit?
What in the actual hell? Your coworker is a psychopath
How fucking bad at your job do you have to be that you can’t handle 10 burgers at once, let alone over the span of an hour. This is both lazy and gross. She shouldn’t be working the grill if she can’t handle the pace.
Saw grilled burgers held in beef broth, and brats held in beer, at appropriate temp, at golf course concessions operation all the time. They got finished on flat top when the leagues came in. Needed the headstart when 40-60 guys all show up at the same time.
It’s a violation of common decency.
It’s a safety violation. A common sense violation. A human violation. It’s a violation of everything it means to be a chef. Sorry for the hyperbole but what the actual fuck? Simply ask her “would you pay to eat that?”
Poached burger
ew that’s what quiznos and snoopy’s did with their meats. 🤮
I feel violated for seeing it.
Yeah this is, first and foremost, **not** a safe way to hot hold anything. Secondly, it’s going to ruin the quality of the product, which is really not that hard to cook a large number of at once.
TLDR: Not food safe, not up to quality standards Lazy fucking trash.
It is certainly a violation of all decency.
My SO does a variation of this, except it’s underneath in a steam well being kept to temp, with clean water that turns to beef broth with all the patties in it. If done correctly and under high volume (rush hour in a sports bar on sport day thing), it makes very juicy burgers. Again, it works specifically for us, with all the correct conditions.
Have you ever tried a burger held like this and then reheated? Unless you’re pressing the excess water out on the grill, it’s going to be like eating a wet meat sponge..
If she can’t cook 10 burgers an hour she should not be in a kitchen. That is ridiculous!
that bacon looks butt fucked, too
That goes against health code because it’s not at a food safe temp.
Holding it in water is dumb. A 50/50 mixture of BBQ sauce and sprite is better.
Come to think of it, putting them in a dry pan on the table would be better. It’s still not being held at a safe temp, but at least you’re not using water for no reason.
There’s also no reason to hold them. You think 10 burgers an hour is a rush? I do that in ten minutes without any help. I’ve BBQ’d 50 burgers in less than half hour, including the time or took to preheat the BBQ. So there’s no reason to have to hold ten burgers in an hour.
If you have trouble getting them ready on time, just buy precooked patties. Sure the quality isn’t great, but it’s still better than holding patties in room temp water.
If you do nothing about this, you’re just as much part of the problem as anyone else there.
how long is that water been there? what temp is the water? Show me a log of when you temped the water and when you changed it.
-Health department
What is this hotel hell that’s where he learned it?
As everyone else has pointed out, the holding temp dictates safety issue or not
Looking at burger patties soaking in water like this makes me unbelievably angry
It’s about time and temp. Does she use the same water all day? What temp was the water and patty to begin with? How long do they sit in the water? If you know the time and temps you can Google the rules. But I’m betting on it being wrong. And gross.
Edit, what’s going on with the bacon?
[obligatory Gordon Ramsay ](https://youtu.be/xDpsIoAI9sA?si=VGVx3mcCPafDVzme&start=195)
This sub never fails to get a “wtf is that” out of me
If she just moves that thing a couple feet onto the back of the grill she’s good to go if the water is above danger zone temps. You see that all the time in busy cafeterias and shit.
We used to do it but have them sitting in beef stock for our lunch rush which was around 200 in the hour we were open.
Do you not have fridges? If you aren’t a busy place why the hell do you have a big pan of bacon sat out? It looks dry as fuck so it must have been there all day. Bacon takes minutes to cook.
I am amazed this woman hasn’t killed someone, for all we know she has and the connection has never been made.
Everything this “cook” is doing is FUBAR buddy.
Find another kitchen dude and tell everyone you know to never eat there.
Don’t be afraid to call shitty cooks out. If they can’t handle being told the correct way to do things then they don’t deserve to be there. Make your manager do something about it
This might be a violation. But it’s also an abomination. 10 burgers an hour? Just cook them fresh to order. Sounds like a lazy cook.
We used to par cook burgers years back. But we were selling like 40 to 60 an hour.
No sir, I don’t like it
Room temp – that’s a paddlin’.