Patriot'sPizza:
use the microwave to reheat the pasta before you put it in the steam table…(I assume you don’t have a stove) Or you could buy a little electric “stove” from Wal-Mart to reheat…
To cool, put your sauce into a “round” container, plastic wrap the top & punch a thumb hole in the plastic & place that container into a larger container & fill the void w/ice & put into the cooler…it will cool down fine w/o any health hazards…
We heat each measure to order in a microwave. We don’t do huge amounts of pasta, so it is not a big problem. When we do get pasta service going higher, we’ll look for a used “sauce warmer” . . . one of those round heated dealies that holds chili, or cheese, or marinara. It’s electric, and holds about a half gallon or less . A table-top food warmer could be used with 1/3 pans or 1/6 pans if you have one.
OBLIGATORY FOOD SAFETY NOTE: You can only ‘reheat’ a food product one time, 160F for sauce, after it is cooled and stored in cooler. After that, the code in our state says you gotts pitch it. Ergo, my single service reheating for low volume.
We get sort of fast and loose on Fridays and Saturdays with our tomato dipping sauce. We use time stress limit for our holding plan. We label the tub of sauce with the TIME of discard, which is FOUR HOURS after it leaves your last temperature control. So, we set it on countertop unchilled for as long as it takes to empty the tub (3 quarts), or until four hours is up. We MUST discard at 4 hours to avoid undue risk.
It is well within the food regulations as long as we have our written plan in place with the health department, and follow the outline religiously. This allows us to set up a large diameter plastic pump onto a gallon mayo jug to dispense sauce into 4oz souffles for portioning and lidding. SOOOO much easier on the fly than ladels or spoons or pouring. We could put the mayo gallon into a water bath on warming tray or electric eye if we wanted it hot at service.
Another bell sounded when I read the original question, like steam tables aren’t designed to heat chilled food to safe temps, are they? My recollection is that they are for holding temps of properly heated foods. . . unless you jack the temp up to 200F or something. I may be completely off base since it is 12 years since I last used one.
