How Does A Chef Use Maths?
A chef has a lot of data to work with. When they are making a dish, they have to take into account how many portions will be served and what size the portion should be for each person. They also need to think about the cost of ingredients and how much time it takes them to prepare the dish. This is all maths! continue reading for the detailed reasoning on how Chefs use maths.
Portion Control
One of the major challenges for a chef is portion control. They need to make sure that they are delivering just the right amount of food, and not too much or too little. When chefs measure ingredients for their dishes, they often use scales which can also be used to weigh out portions quickly and accurately.
The size of each individual dish needs to be consistent too. If a chef is serving small portions of soup, then these should always be the same size no matter how many people they are cooking for or what type of bowl they have served it in.
Sourcing Ingredients
Another key part of being a good Chef is sourcing ingredients that match your vision and budget while keeping quality standards high. This means you need to find suppliers who can deliver the best produce at the right time so you aren’t wasting money on excess food costs or hurting your reputation by running out of stock early. There’s also margins to consider which will affect whether an ingredient costs more than another depending on where it’s sourced from and how much work goes into producing it; this impacts profit margin as well as portion control when deciding how much to include in each dish.
This is where maths comes into play with your suppliers, you will have set prices for certain ingredients so need all the costs of these ingredients to be as low as possible that still meet standard quality control. You can also work out profit margins by using percentages and working backwards from the price customers are paying per item on sale at a restaurant or market stall. This allows chefs to make sure they’re not over charging their customers while making enough money they don’t go under!
Timing
There’s no point having an amazing menu if it takes hours to prepare every dish; Unless there’s lots of time between courses Chefs may find people leave before getting through them- this means they’ve lost business which makes no sense at all! When working out timings for recipes, chefs often use a stopwatch to track how long it takes them from start to finish so they can work out the average time each dish should take.
This is where technology comes in handy as well because you can also input data into spreadsheets and create formulas that will calculate the timing of dishes without having to do any manual calculations- saving lots of time which would be spent on other important tasks like actually cooking the food or speaking with customers about their experience!
These are just some examples of how maths plays an important role across various aspects of being a Chef; there are no doubt Chefs have extensive knowledge when it comes to mathematics. If you think this might be something you’d like to do, there are lots of maths revision courses in London you can take at different levels depending on your current ability that will teach you everything from fractions and percentages to calculus as well as there being a high of online maths tutor that are also able to offer their expertise.
If you, or your parents would like to find out more, please just get in touch via email at info@exam.tips or call us on 0800 689 1272.