Since we switched over to fresh sausage on our pizzas, it seems like it takes forever to just grab a chunk and start pulling little pieces off to put on the pizzas. Anyone have ideas to speed it up. We don’t want to have to pre cook it before hand.
I know you said you dont want to precook, but try this if you have a fryer, Take your sausage meat grab chunks of it flatten it between your fingers than dunk it in the fryolater for 25-30 seconds than treat it like premade sausage topping, I recently just started doing it with great results. It comes in 5lb bags. It takes me 5 mins to do up the whole 5 lbs
Unfortunately I don’t have a fryer, only a grease less fryer. The customers love the fresh sausage, just seems tedious trying to to pull apart and put on pizzas when you are 20+ tickets deep on a slammed night
You never will be able to spread on as fast as precooked but it shouldn’t take too long once you get use to it. The main time issue can be having somewhere to wash your hands after applying the topping. The trade off is speed for flavor. Walter
We use gloves every time, but I do have a hand sink directly behind the line.
We precook the sausage for this reason and for the risk of cross contamination. Standards go down when times are busy so we dont want any mishaps.
One of the reasons we precook as well. Plus, I use so many of my other pizza toppings on salads and subs, I don’t like having the raw pork on the make line with those RTE items. We just par cook in large chunks on a sheet pan for 5 mins. Then we can break it up as we top if needed. I know you said you don’t want to precook, but it’s the only solution I can think of to your problem. And since we don’t cook it to death, it still has great flavor.
A little oil, water, or pizza sauce on the fingers and training people to keep their hands close to the pizza when pinching goes a long way. Like Walter said, it’s the trade off. Like anything except stews, nothing is as good as the first time you cook it.
I dip my fingers in pizza sauce when I put mine on. It seems to help a lot with the stickiness of the sausage.
So fingers are going in the main sauce bucket each time you sell a pizza with sausage?
The first couple of places I worked in the pizza business (1978 on) used fresh sausage. The idea was to grab a handful and start squeezing it out between the thumb and first finger and taking a pinch at a time with the other hand and flinging it on the pie… Tastes great, a pain to use and the food safety issues are very real.
I train my guys to have a little pizza sauce on their hands when pinching sausage, the hand that holds the glob of sausage has some sauce on the web between the thumb and forefinger, this also makes the placing hand non-stick too.
They sauce the crust, place the inner part of their hand onto it to lube it up, and go nuts pinching off sausage.
I’ve tried pre-cooked using our own fresh sausage, and it I find it only detracts from our quality.
@bodegahwy I do not see pinching off fresh sausage as a food safety issue at all, because we are working with non-RTE products at this point.
We have a handwash sink on the line, and multiple buckets with towels in sanitizing solution (bleach water at 200 PPM) The only time we use gloves is a single gloved hand, and only when direct contact with RTE foods is required. My opinion is that glove use has created more food safety issue than it was supposed to correct, and I blame it on misunderstanding their usage, and people believing it is a personal protection device.
I have seen fast food workers use the restroom wearing gloves, and return to work wearing those same gloves. How disgusting is that!?
I dont know about dipping fingers in the main sauce bucket either but I do agree that gloves are a false sense of security for customers and kitchen staff. Unless they are being properly used which I believe for the most part they arent they do more harm than they do good. We have a subway right next door I dont eat there but I do talk with the manager on a regular basis because he is a real friendly guy and I can tell you that I have never seen them wash their hands in between glove use and customers. They take peoples money and put on a new pair of gloves and on the the next guy.