Do The Worse Chain Restaurants Serve Microwaved Entrees?

[Wesley_Clark]

@astro

There is an enormous section of the food industry that makes and sells what are effectively frozen, pre-made entrée quality restaurant dinners for chain and some non-chain restaurants. It’s a multi-billion dollar business. They typically require a bit more prep than heat and eat, but are quality and portion controlled and vastly simpler to prepare than meals from scratch.

These are not like the grocery store frozen food aisle meals. If prepared properly you would be hard pressed in some cases to tell the difference between scratch cooking and these meals. The main issue is that experienced cooks are not required to put these together so cheaper labor can be hired. It’s higher quality modular food.

Obviously this is not true “fine dining”, but it’s a huge chunk of what you are getting in many (but not all) chain and some non-chain mid-tier restaurants.

Can the public buy these items, or are they only available to restaurants?

[astro]

@Wesley_Clark

Can the public buy these items, or are they only available to restaurants?

Not sure. These are usually a wholesale only items.

Here’s a company that claims to deliver frozen rest quality entrees.

Fully Prepared Meal Delivery Service | Magic Kitchen

The pricing is not all that much less than going to a restaurant.

[bump]

Another anecdote… I used to hang around with a couple (both since divorced and moved away), who ran a wrap sandwich franchise of some sort (can’t recall the name at the moment).

Anyway, the sandwiches were fresh-made to order, but the soups were frozen and microwaved (and surprisingly good!), mostly because on the shoestring that they operated on, they couldn’t afford to buy all the crap for making several kinds of soup a week and spend the time cooking it, etc…

[Bridget_Burke]

@BlinkingDuck

I once {shifts eyes around shiftily} worked with Sonic on a project.

They were convinced…CONVINCED that the people that ate on Sonic were more intelligent, creative, higher SES etc etc than their competitors. They wanted to use these advantages in certain ways and wanted my help on this. They were especially convinced their customers were much MUCH more artistic than the norm.

I was unable to find any evidence of this and I could tell it hurt my/my company’s standing with them. They never used me/my company again.

Seriously, those guys were deluded. Not as bad as Wendy’s but close.

From the quality of their ads, they must still be deluded. All the folks they picture “dining” at Sonic are horrible, horrible people…

[YogSothoth]

I just now realized that by saying “unthawed”, I meant to say “thawed” :smack:

[Diceman]

Oddly enough, this came up just the other day. Two of my coworkers, both of whom who say they used to work in restaurants, insist that if you order your steak well done, it will be microwaved. Apparently, cooking a steak to well done takes longer than most customers are willing to wait, so they nuke 'em.

[Amblydoper]

Microwaves are too easy to use for shortcuts. I come down hard on my cooks when I hear about them microwaving this they shouldn’t.

As a chef, I can tell you what I microwave at my restaurant. Steaming/reheating vegetables and rice. jumpstarting things like meatloaf and chimichangas that would take too long to get hot and possibly burn on the outside before getting heated through. Heating burritos so the cheese melts on the inside.

Microwaves are NOT to be used for cooking meats. They are only used for reheating already cooked foods. We prepare everything from scratch, but the microwave still plays a role, especially in serving food quickly from line cooks with limited experience.

[Mister_Rik]

@Diceman

Oddly enough, this came up just the other day. Two of my coworkers, both of whom who say they used to work in restaurants, insist that if you order your steak well done, it will be microwaved. Apparently, cooking a steak to well done takes longer than most customers are willing to wait, so they nuke 'em.

I’ve never nuked a well-done steak, but I have been tempted. Like during lunch, when a table of eight businessmen come in for lunch. Seven of them order the soup-and-half-sandwich special, and the eighth guy orders a well-done steak. I could have had the whole table’s lunch done in 10 minutes, but nooooooo…