Restaurant-grade vs. household-grade equipments

The difference between consumer and commercial stuff depends on the stuff.

Restaurant cooktops heat faster and more evenly than home cooktops, so home cookware needs — ideally — to be built to compensate for that. Also, commercial equipment tends to be more specialized and less intended for multiple purposes. There's nothing stopping you from stocking your kitchen with a bunch of solid-aluminum cookware from Update International — and I did, when I was young and broke — but you'll have a much harder time of it. That stuff is really difficult to use on home burners because they're so much smaller and less diffuse than restaurant burners, and don't even think about moving your tomato sauce straight from the cooktop into the fridge in it.

So cookware for the home tends to be absurdly overbuilt compared to the commercial stuff. The best of it — All-Clad, basically — you can throw onto a small, slow home burner and it'll still heat pretty evenly and responsively.

My understanding is that the Cuisinart Multiclad stuff is okay. I've never used it. Just heard about it occasionally.

Cutting boards are a different story. The ones sold to home consumers … well man, I just don't get it, frankly. I own Winco boards, both in wood (which are my primary surfaces) and plastic (for food safety). The wood boards are as big as will fit on my countertops; I paid about $65 for my 18ʺ×30ʺ×1½ʺ and about $50 for my 18ʺ×24ʺ×1½ʺ ones. The plastic ones are sized to fit in the dishwasher; I don't remember what I paid for them, but I'd be really amazed if it was more than $20 each.

It's really hard to generalize about this stuff, you know? There's no one rule of thumb that will tell you everything you need to know about supplying your kitchen. Sometimes you have to use your noodle a little bit. Like with the cutting board example above: Ask yourself "Is this object more complicated than an undifferentiated slab of plastic?" If the answer's no, then ask yourself why the Bed Bath and Beyond wants $29.95 for it. You know?

/r/AskCulinary Thread