The tray and its usefulness in the kitchen

[Docb]

Did a monster cooking session this morning... batch of veg soup (adding tamarind to see if it is useful), batch of coleslaw Including making mayo, get a jar of kimchi started, make a batch of brownies and prep the veg and roast chicken for my tea later. Maybe it is age or maybe it is the brain rot causing my neuropathy moving on, but my days of doing six things at once, keeping track of all of them all and integrating the activities in an efficient manner are long gone. Time to start thinking a bit creatively or chaos will ensue.

Anyway everything has got done, and I have found that possibly the new most useful thing in the kitchen is a decent sized tray with side that curl up to give a reasonable lip. When it came to preparing veg my chopping board went onto the tray and all the debris (skins, roots and leaves that even I would not put in soup) was scraped off the chopping board and onto the tray with the prepared veg either going into a pot or bowl. By the time I had finished the veg prep for soup, kimchi, coleslaw and tea, all the debris was in one place, piled up on the tray! One trip to the compost heap and all gone. Wipe down tray and then use it to collect all the ingredients and any sundry items of kit needed for each batch of stuff and put them on the tray. Double check to make sure I have everything need to make whatever I am going to make, and when the tray is empty, I know I have not forgotten anything!

So my thought for all who might be overwhelmed by the idea of cooking stuff from scratch, is not to buy some expensive bit of wonder kit, but get yourself a tray.

 

[Robin]

Now why haven’t I thought of that! For the last 50years I’ve been chucking my peelings, bad bits etc onto the worktop and then sweeping them off with one hand, into the other, to put into the compost container by the sink.

 

[s'nic]

I have no compost heap, but when I had a new kitchen fitted I did get a waste disposal included, so while preparing a meal I just dump any peelings in the mini sink where the insinkerator is and, have it chew them up when the prep is finished.

I also take out ingredients before I start and put them together close by. Once added the item is put away, or moved aside.

I do however own a few trays. They definitely can be useful 🙂

 

[Docb]

Thats exactly what I always did @Robin but peelings and stuff always finished up everywhere, especially on the floor, when I was cooking a decent batch of something.. No more, thanks to that unsung hero of the kitchen, the tray.

 

[Robin]

peelings and stuff always finished up everywhere, especially on the floor, when I was cooking a decent batch of something..

Same here!

 

[trophywench]

Not saying whether I agree or not. Only comment damned onion skin has a life of its own in my house.

 

[Martin.A]

Just finished preparing all the veg for our tea later (pulled pork, cooked in our slow cooker, and roasted veg) and as we don't have a compost heap all the debris went into our food caddy, which the council collects every week. When I opened it there were 5 snails inside. How the hell did they get in when the lid is always down? Another of life's mysteries.

 

[silentsquirrel]

Just finished preparing all the veg for our tea later (pulled pork, cooked in our slow cooker, and roasted veg) and as we don't have a compost heap all the debris went into our food caddy, which the council collects every week. When I opened it there were 5 snails inside. How the hell did they get in when the lid is always down? Another of life's mysteries.

Eggs on a discarded cabbage leaf or similar, perhaps?

 

[Martin.A]

Eggs on a discarded cabbage leaf or similar, perhaps?

There's undoubtedly some discarded salad leaves in there, but if that's a possibility they've grown remarkably large if they hatched in the 5 days since the council emptied it.

 

[Proud to be erratic]

Trays were a mainstay in our house for decades. Not just in the kitchen, but for children's toys and activities that had potential for small bits getting lost. I even had a couple in my garage / workshop for when I was doing fiddly repairs.

We moved just over a year ago and are (still.....!!!) cohabiting with our daughter, s-i-l and grandson. Their kitchen (well its really ours now) has nowhere to sensibly keep one tray, never mind 3 or 4. The modern trend for kitchen design sets out to "hide" everything behind a door or drawer panel and as far as I'm concerned it's hopeless; nothing is quickly accessible. We now even have the idiotic hidden drawer; so to get to all cutlery and kitchen utensils you have to open one drawer to get to the hidden drawer. A kitchen designer came round a fortnight ago and was enthusing about their latest hidden drawer; he quickly cottoned on when I grumpily observed I needed that even less than a hole in the top of my head. My daughter still doesn’t get the irony of having an array of un-matching and odd-sized storage "containers" out on the worktops so that the useful items are actually somewhere handy, day by day!

I no longer have a garage and my shed is still full of their stuff, so our humble trays are still in storage. But, @Docb, I'm completely with you in advocating the usefulness of a tray, with a degree of robustness and decent sides. Most of all in modern wipeable materials. Our older wooden trays have all permanently left the 'erratic' household.

 

[Docb]

Although my original post was a bit whimsical, there was an underlying point that if, like me, you do not slavishly follow recipes and your brainpower is going off a bit, then putting all the ingredients for a dish together in a defined place (a tray) is a good way of not forgetting to put the stock cubes or that unopened pack of carrots into the soup.

If you don't really want to admit to your inability to remember stuff on the fly or to keep your work area tidy, then simply claim you are using the classical French cooking principle of "mis en place". Designed to try to make sure that the least bright commis chef could produce something akin to what the head chef wants without creating a big mess, it is a useful principle to adopt in any kitchen and a tray is an absolute godsend when it comes to making it happen.
🙂

 

[Leadinglights]

Although my original post was a bit whimsical, there was an underlying point that if, like me, you do not slavishly follow recipes and your brainpower is going off a bit, then putting all the ingredients for a dish together in a defined place (a tray) is a good way of not forgetting to put the stock cubes or that unopened pack of carrots into the soup.

If you don't really want to admit to your inability to remember stuff on the fly or to keep your work area tidy, then simply claim you are using the classical French cooking principle of "mis en place". Designed to try to make sure that the least bright commis chef could produce something akin to what the head chef wants without creating a big mess, it is a useful principle to adopt in any kitchen and a tray is an absolute godsend when it comes to making it happen.
🙂

I remembered this tip when I was preparing the vast crop of runner and French beans for blanching and it was a brilliant solution to not getting the bits everywhere. The simplest of things can make a big difference to how easy a job is.

 

[silver minion]

Although my original post was a bit whimsical, there was an underlying point that if, like me, you do not slavishly follow recipes and your brainpower is going off a bit, then putting all the ingredients for a dish together in a defined place (a tray) is a good way of not forgetting to put the stock cubes or that unopened pack of carrots into the soup.

If you don't really want to admit to your inability to remember stuff on the fly or to keep your work area tidy, then simply claim you are using the classical French cooking principle of "mis en place". Designed to try to make sure that the least bright commis chef could produce something akin to what the head chef wants without creating a big mess, it is a useful principle to adopt in any kitchen and a tray is an absolute godsend when it comes to making it happen.
🙂

I completely agree and it also helps if the stuff you freeze is properly labelled. I pulled out what I thought was vegetable curry. Prepared the rice etc, put the oven on and discovered it was stewed rhubarb.