What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Cup’

Go to any website that sells coffee-making products — I’m talking urns, percolators, brewers, that sort of thing — and you’ll notice that the products are listed like this:

J.E.S.’s Top Gift Ideas for 2011

It’s gift giving time again, and we’ve put together a list of unique and useful gift ideas for kitchen. Nothing makes a gift more personal than taking the time to choose something that suits the taste and interest of the recipient. If you have a kitchen enthusiast on your gift list, home or professional, take a look at our gift guide.

Cutting boards come in many varieties but the two basic ones are wood and plastic. Care and maintenance for each one depends on the material used. Wood cutting board requires coating the board in mineral oil which acts as a sealant to prevent bacteria from forming. Avoid submerging in water, store in a dry place, brush it clean, and avoid bleach. A plastic cutting board has to have warm soapy water to clean it and should avoid the dishwasher. There are four steps to caring for a wooden cutting board.

The holidays are just around the corner, and it’s time to start thinking about your shopping list for the loved ones in your life. Here are a few J.E.S. Restaurant Equipment gift suggestions for the cook (or cooks) in your family.

Over the years, wine tasting has become a fairly standard practice among those looking to expand their cultural and technical understanding of alcoholic beverages. But with the relatively recent rise to prevalence of smaller batch craft beers, combined with our modern ease of importing foreign goods, beer tasting is beginning to become a popular pass time for both seasoned aficionados and new beer drinkers alike.

Prescriptive rules of etiquette — even those starchy, hoity-toity, three-sorts-of-dinner-fork type rules — didn’t just crop up randomly. Smart people like Judith Martin, Amy Vanderbilt, and Emily Post paid close attention to both successful dinner guests and unpopular ones and thought about how the differences in their social tics affected the flow of a conversation or the atmosphere in a room. They listed these behaviors in notebooks, found the patterns, and then got their findings published. Good and bad manners existed well before Emily Post — all she did was jot them down.

Since the beginning of time people have searched for ways to preserve the shelf life of food. Today we may take for granted that our refrigeration units offer a cold haven for food that would otherwise quickly spoil, but it wasn’t to long ago that we were seeking out caves, or drying out food to keep it stored.

Today 98% of US homes own a refrigerator, and 21% own two or more. But many people don’t know how these appliances work. (And many of us are not even sure if the light stays on when you close the door.) No matter if it’s commercial or residential the basics are the same, and during a recent meeting of our service department one of our helpful technicians showed the staff the sequence of operation for refrigeration.

Throughout the month we have been post tips on our Twitter account to help you when it gets time to carve the pumpkin this year for the Halloween holiday. Now that it’s so close to the holiday, here’s a look back at some of the best tips.

Although manufacturer warranties have made the world of expensive consumer purchases a much safer place to shop, they can sometimes be tricky things. Many warranties come with sets of extenuating circumstances that can render them invalid if the product is used in the wrong way or in the wrong location. Restaurant equipment often includes several of these special-case details, so it is important to read through the warranty sheets on your new equipment before replacing any old machines.

Do you own a KitchenAid stand mixer but don’t seem to use it quite as much as you would like? Perhaps it’s time to consider some accessories to expand the usefulness of your mixer, but where to begin? KitchenAid’s accessories list is fairly expansive, and can be intimidating to search through if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for, but this KitchenAid accessories guide from the J.E.S. Restaurant Equipment Learning Center will give you a good overview of what each attachment does and which set of attachments will best suit your particular kitchen activities.

The best present you can give an adult-aged person is something that you’ve made yourself. This self-made gift can be painted or written down or glued together or baked — whatever idiosyncratic skill that you have, access it, materialize it, wrap it up, and then stick it under the fir.

Today a Bar-B-Que restaurant owner stopped by our showroom to have several of his knives sharpened on one of our M2100 Chef’s Commercial Diamond Hone Knife Sharpeners. A question arose from his visit. Which are better? Electric or manual knife sharpeners?

The weather is getting cooler and a rich cup of cappuccino is just the thing to keep you warm during these chilly months. The IMIX-3 Infusion iMIX hot drink dispenser, Cappuccino, 3 hoppers is ideal for making a finely-brewed, rich cappuccino.

A good set of kitchen knives is arguably the most important tool in any chef’s arsenal. No matter what is being cooked or prepared, it is inevitable that there will be some sort of cutting or chopping involved at some point, and those who have spent any time in a kitchen know how important it is to maintain the blades on your knives. Dull knives will not cut effectively and can be tiresome or even hazardous to use in situations that require precise and careful cuts. Keeping your knives sharp is a necessary routine for any amateur, professional, or home chef, but it is critical to your knives’ longevity that they be sharpened properly. Although they are used for all sorts of heavy-duty tasks in the kitchen, knives are actually fairly delicate implements, and improper or overzealous sharpening of a blade can be more detrimental than the wear from any period of use. Many restaurants and commercial kitchens regularly outsource their knife sharpening to a professional third party, but taking measures to keep your blades sharp on your own is an easily achievable way to avoid having to constantly send your knives away to be restored.

Stocking glassware for your bar or restaurant can often be a daunting proposition. With so many different types and styles of glassware , it is only natural to wonder if you are buying the “right” glassware to properly compliment your drink menu. Although the “rules” concerning what drinks go into what sort of glass are mostly arbitrary (reasonable customers will forgive you for not always having exactly the correct glass for every occasion), having a variety of different glasses in which to serve your various drinks will help add interest and flair to your beverage offerings. The types of glasses that you need, however, will ultimately depend on what sort of drinks that you are going to be putting into them. Here is a quick overview of the “necessary” glasses for different kinds of beverages.

Salad spinners are a great way to clean and dry your lettuce in one container. Because these appliances use centrifugal force, they are a much more efficient and effective way to prepare leafy greens.  Rather than using a bowl of water and paper towels, which can leave your leaves still wet, a salad spinner gets rid of dirt and excess water. A salad spinner consists of three main parts. The outer bowl, the inner bowl, and the lid with the handle. The outer bowl is what collects the water and dirt from the lettuce. The inner bowl is where the greens go, and the lid keeps water from splashing out and the built in handle moves the inner bowl to clean the lettuce.

Regardless of what type of restaurant you decide to open, one thing is for certain: Everyone loves ice cream! Ice cream shops are a great idea for marketing to all age groups from toddlers to senior citizens. The average American eats approximately 6 gallons of ice cream a year, therefore an ice cream shop can be a great investment for you as an entrepreneur.

While many Americans regard this day with memories of sadness today is also a day to be proud. J.E.S. Restaurant Equipment is proud to be an American company that supports many American manufacturers with rich histories beginning right here in the land of the free. That’s why in honor of this tragic yet uniting anniversary we’ve compiled a list of some of our most popular made in the USA products.

Don’t be one of the numerous restaurants that close their doors due to poor food cost management.

Over the years, keg sizes have become a somewhat confusing topic for those looking to purchase their own direct draw serving equipment and kegerators for their bar, restaurant, or residence.  After centuries of use in the preparation and storage of alcoholic beverages, the essentially arbitrary sizing system of barrels and kegs has become a bit cumbersome, and the exact meaning of “keg” during a conversation varies depending on the interpretation of the person with which you are speaking. Although keg sizes are not officially standardized from one location to the next, there are generally accepted regional standards that will help make selecting appropriately-sized kegs a simple endeavor.