How correctly is the primary treatment of vegetables done?

The primary culinary processing of vegetables is a procedure with which a person who has anything to do with cooking is necessarily confronted.

General recommendations

Any food that enters the kitchen before it is used for cooking is necessarily pre-treated. This applies to vegetables. Primary processing of vegetables and mushrooms is carried out as carefully and carefully as possible.

Cleaning vegetables from the peel should be done when the vegetables and hands are dry enough. In this case, careful removal of all damaged areas should be undertaken.

Immediately after cleaning each vegetable, it should be placed not on the cutting board, but in the dishes, where cold water is poured.

Primary processing of vegetables at home and in the public catering system includes several stages: sorting, washing, cleaning and slicing.

Sorting of vegetables

This stage is designed to remove decayed, severely beaten specimens and foreign objects, in addition, while vegetables or mushrooms are sorted based on size and quality.

Primary processing of vegetables with sorting by quality makes it possible to use each variety correctly. For example, bitter varieties of onions are used when the first and second courses are prepared, while the sweet ones are better used for salad, sauce or a side dish for cold dishes.

Mature and strong tomatoes are used in salads, tomato puree is made from crumpled and overripe, and green ones are suitable for salting, they can also be left for further ripening.

Sorting by size helps to carry out the process more correctly, because the cooking time of different products in the case of heat treatment is different.

Sorting by the size of root crops reduces the size of waste with mechanized cleaning. If the vegetables are not sorted, much more waste is obtained. This is due to the fact that a large part of the tuber, which is edible, is captured along with the peel in large roots.

Usually sorting is done manually, only mechanical pots and drums can be used for potatoes.

Washing and cleaning

Primary processing of vegetables necessarily includes their washing in cool water to remove particles of dirt. This stage is necessary to ensure compliance with sanitary and hygienic standards during the production process.

Careful washing of potatoes is required to prevent deterioration of solid parts of the grinding disc on potato peelers. Waste of well-washed potatoes make it possible to obtain starch of increased quality.

Green onions, spinach leaves, lettuce, parsley, cilantro and the like, after the decayed parts and roots have been removed, is lowered into a jar with cold water for half an hour to soak away the earth and sand adhering to the green.

Then the greens are washed with a large amount of water, which is taken at a rate of up to 10 liters per kilogram of product. At the same time, water changes up to three times.
In industrial conditions, special screens or baskets are used for washing tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers and zucchini.

The primary treatment of vegetables in the third stage involves cleaning.

For potatoes in the public catering system, potato peelers are provided. When they are used, the peeled tubers remain with the eyes, which have to be cleaned with a groove knife.

Manual cleaning of potatoes involves the use of only one knife.
With manual cleaning of young potatoes, it is covered in a container of water, the peel on it is scraped off due to the rotational movements of the wooden oar. The remaining peel is cleaned with the help of a knife.

White, red and Savoy cabbage is cut from the stump of contaminated and decayed leaves or their corrupted areas. If you are going to cook dishes using cabbage leaf entirely, the stump is cut out so that the leaf remains intact. If the cabbage is intended for further cutting, the head is cut into 2-4 parts, after which it is convenient to cut out the stump.

Primary processing: slicing vegetables

To ensure that the ready-made culinary products had an attractive appearance, and in the process of heat treatment all the pieces were prepared simultaneously, they should have the same shape and thickness.

For cutting, there are special machines, but in small volumes, vegetables are cut manually.

Pieces can be in the form of slices, circles, cubes, brusochkov, straws or lobules.

More complex cutting is done to give pieces of vegetables a barrel, a pear, a cylinder, a ball, a scallop, a nut, chips, a spiral.

Working with mushrooms

Preparatory work with mushrooms, as well as primary processing of vegetables, is divided into certain stages.

First remove the worms. The legs are cut along and along with the hats are placed for a couple of hours in a basin, where salted water is poured in order to get rid of live larvae.

When mushrooms are well washed, they can be cooked.

To prevent the blackening of the fungi during the cleaning process, they are lowered into cold water with the addition of vinegar.