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Purchasing

The purchasing process is an essential part of every food service operation. All competent cooks should be skilled in buying the appropriate ingredients, in accurate amounts, at the right time, and at the best price.

Every kitchen operation has different purchasing procedures. But there is one rule that should always be followed:

Buy only as much as it is anticipated will be needed until the next delivery.

This will ensure that foods stay fresh and will create a high inventory turnover. All foods deteriorate in time, some more quickly than others. It is the job of the purchaser to ensure that only those quantities that will be used immediately or in the near future are purchased.

Market Sourcing

Sources of supply vary considerably from location to location. Large cities have a greater number and variety of suppliers than do small towns and isolated communities. Purchasers should establish contact with available suppliers such as wholesalers, local producers and packers, retailers, cooperative associations, and food importers. In most instances, the person in charge of buying will contact several suppliers to obtain the necessary foods. Some wholesalers diversify their product lines in order to meet all food-related kitchen needs.

Food products are obtained from various sources of supply. For example, a packing house supplies meat and meat products, while a food wholesaler supplies dry goods. Once business is established with a supplier, all transactions should be well documented and kept readily available on file.

There are two major food categories: perishables and non-perishables.

Perishables

Perishable items include fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and shellfish, fresh meats, poultry, and dairy products. As a rule, perishables are bought frequently to ensure freshness. Frozen foods, such as vegetables, fish and meat products, have a longer lifespan and can be ordered less frequently and stored in a freezer.

Non-perishables

Non-perishable items include dry goods, flour, cereals, and miscellaneous items such as olives, pickles, and other condiments. These can be ordered on a weekly or monthly basis.

Keep in mind that just because something does not go bad isn’t a reason to buy it in quantities larger than you need. Every item in your inventory is equal to a dollar amount that you could be saving or spending on something else. Consider that a case of 1000 sheets of parchment paper may cost $250. If you have a case and a half sitting in your inventory, but only use a few sheets a day, that is a lot of money sitting in your storeroom.

Factors That Impact Prices

Food products in particular fluctuate in price over the year, due to many factors:

• Seasonality: When food is in season, there is more of it available in the local food supply, bringing prices down. Additionally, foods in season are usually of higher quality and have longer shelf life than those that are out of season and need to be transported long distances to market.
• Weather: Severe weather can have a huge impact on the cost of food. Drought, flooding, and unseasonable frost have all affected major produce-supplying areas of the world in recent years, causing a rise in prices for many items.
• Costs of transportation: If the cost of fuel or transportation rises, so does the cost of food that needs to travel to market.
• Commodity prices: A number of foods are traded on the commodity market, such as meats and grains. These prices fluctuate as buyers who trade in these products in large volumes buy and sell, much like the stock market.

Before purchasing any food items, ask the following questions.

• When is the item to be used?
• Which supplier has the best price and the best quality? Where an item is purchased should be determined by the price and the quality of the available supplies. When ordering supplies, it is advisable to get prices from at least three sources, then purchase from the supplier who quotes the best price for comparable quality.
• When will the item be delivered? Depending on the distance of the food service establishment from the supplier, delivery may take hours or days. Remember, it is extremely difficult to maintain food quality and consistency if you do not know when your order will be delivered. For this reason, menu planning and a running inventory are two of the most important aspects of purchasing procedures.

Specifications

Meat, seafood, poultry, processed fruits and vegetables, and fresh fruits and vegetables can be ordered under different specifications. For example,

• Meats can be ordered by grade, cut, weight/thickness, fat limitation, age, whether fresh or frozen, and type of packaging.
• Seafood can be ordered by type (e.g., fin fish/shellfish), species, market form, condition, grade, place of origin, whether fresh or frozen, count, size, and packaging,
• Poultry can be ordered by type, grade, class (e.g., broiler, fryer), style (e.g., breasts, wings), size, whether fresh or frozen, and packaging.
• Processed fruits and vegetables can be ordered by grade (sometimes), variety, packaging size and type, drained weight, count per case, packing medium, and whether canned or frozen.
• Fresh fruits and vegetables can be ordered by grade (sometimes), variety, size, weight per container, growing area, and count per container,

Figure 4 shows an example of a purchasing specification sheet that might be kept in a commercial kitchen or receiving area.

Figure 4: Purchasing Specifications

Beef Beef Grade Weight, Size, and Cut Specifications Prime rib Grade AA 7 kg, fully trimmed New York strip Grade AAA 6 kg, bone out, fully trimmed, max. 15 cm width, min. 5 cm depth Tenderloin Grade AAA 3 kg, fully trimmed to silverside Roast sirloin Grade A 7 kg, boneless butt Short loins Grade AAA 6 kg, fully trimmed, 5 cm from eye Pork Pork Grade Weight, Size, and Cut Specifications Pork leg Fresh—Canada #1 6 kg, oven ready, lean Pork loin Fresh—Canada #1 5-6 kg, trimmed, lean Ham 6-8 kg, fully cooked, lean, bone in Poultry Poultry Grade Weight, Size, and Cut Specifications Chicken—Frying Fancy, Eviscerated 1.5 kg, always fresh Turkey Fancy, Eviscerated 9-13 kg Lamb Lamb Grade Weight, Size, and Cut Specifications Legs Fresh—Canada #1 3-5 kg, bone in Lamb loin 2-3 kg, trimmed with all fat removed Seafood Seafood  Grade Weight, Size, and Cut Specifications Shrimp Jumbo 24-30/kg, fresh Oysters Canada #1 35/L

Contract Buying

Some restaurants and hotels, particularly those belonging to chains, will have contracts in place for the purchasing of all products or for certain items. This may mean that the property can only purchase from a specific supplier, but in return it will have negotiated set pricing for the duration of the contract. This has advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, the contract price remains stable and the job of managing food costs becomes more consistent since there are no price fluctuations. On the negative side, contract buying takes away the opportunity to compare prices between suppliers and take advantage of specials that may be offered.

Additional Resources

Purchasing Procedures

In most kitchens, purchasing and ordering are done by the chef and sous-chefs, although in larger hotels there may be purchasing departments assigned this responsibility. Most kitchens will have a list of suppliers, contacts, delivery dates and schedules, and order sheets with par stock levels to make purchasing easier. For a special function or event, such as a banquet, it may also be necessary to determine the required supplies for that function alone.

Portion Control Chart

To calculate the quantities of food items to be ordered for any size banquet, a portion control chart must be consulted first. Most establishments will have a portion control chart similar to the one shown in Figure 5. The chart indicates the portions to be used per person for any given menu item.

Figure 5: Portion control chart

Portion control chart Food Item Menu Item Portion Size Shrimp Shrimp cocktail 80 g (2.82 oz.) Lemon Shrimp cocktail 1 wedge (6/lemon) Cocktail sauce Shrimp cocktail 60 mL (2.11 oz.) Head lettuce Tossed salad 1/4 head Tomato Tossed salad 1/2 each Dressing Tossed salad 60 mL (2.11 oz.) Prime rib, raw, trimmed ready Prime rib 500 g (17.6 oz.) Potato Baked potato 1 each (100 count) Green beans Green beans 80 g (2.82 oz.) Carrots Carrots 80 g (2.82 oz.) Strawberries Fresh strawberries 100 g (3.52 oz.) Whipping cream Berries and cream 60 mL (2.11 oz.) Coffee Coffee 500 g (17.6 oz.) for 75 people Coffee cream Coffee 60 mL (2.11 oz.)

One use for a portion control chart is to estimate the quantity of major ingredients and supplies needed to produce a predicted number of menu servings.

You need to prepare shrimp cocktails and prime rib for a 100-person banquet. Using the portion control chart in Figure 5, you can quickly determine what amounts of major ingredients (Figure 6).

Figure 6L Calculating purchase amounts

Figure 6: Calculating purchase amounts Required Servings Amount to Order 100 x 80 g shrimp 8000 g or 8 kg (17.6 lbs.) shrimp 100 x 1 wedge of lemon 100 wedges = 17 lemons (6 wedges per lemon) 100 x 1/4 head of lettuce 25 heads lettuce 100 x 500 g prime rib raw oven ready 50 kg (110 lbs.) prime rib

Purchase Order Chart with Par Levels

The primary purpose for using a purchasing standard is to ensure that sufficient quantities of all food are on hand to meet daily requirements. To establish and maintain these standards, food inventory must become a daily routine. Having set par levels (the amount you should have on hand to get through to the next order) will help in this regard.

There are three main things you need to know:

• Amount required (par level)
• Amount on hand
• Amount to order

To find the amount to order, subtract the amount on hand from the amount required (Figure 7). In some cases, you may have to order a minimum amount based on the package size, so will need to round your quantity up (such as the whole tub of garlic and full cases of mushrooms, apples, and lettuce in Figure 7).

Figure 7: Purchase order chart

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Meats Meats Amount Required (Par Level) Amount on Hand Amount to Order Actual Order

• Corned beef

10 kg 2 kg 8 kg 8 kg

• Ribs of beef

20 kg 5 kg 15 kg 15 kg

• Ground beef

10 kg – 10 kg 10 kg

• Veal liver

5 kg 500 g 4.5 kg 4.5 kg

• Pork loin

10 kg 3 kg 7 kg 7 kg Fish Fish  Amount Required (Par Level) Amount on Hand Amount to Order Actual Order

• Sole fillet

25 kg 5 kg 20 kg 20 kg Vegetables Vegetables  Amount Required (Par Level) Amount on Hand Amount to Order Actual Order

• Garlic, peeled

2 kg tub 250 g 1.750 kg 2 kg tub

• Mushrooms

5 kg case 500 g 4.5 kg 5 kg case

• Lettuce

2 cases (24/case) 12 (1/2 case) 1 1/2 cases 2 cases Fruits Fruits Amount Required (Par Level) Amount on Hand Amount to Order Actual Order

• Apples

2 cases 1/2 case 1 1/2 cases 2 cases

• Strawberries

10 kg – 10 kg

• Oranges

1 case 2 cases – –

Integrating these par levels into your regular ordering sheets or your ordering system will make it very easy to manage inventory coming in.

More and more suppliers are moving to online ordering systems, which have current prices, case sizes, and often your purchase history available to you when placing an order. Online ordering can often be more convenient as the person placing the order does not have to make calls into an order desk during regular office hours.

definition

Purchase criteria such as size, grade, packaging, market form.

Immunity Boosters

2020 has been the year of mushroom tinctures in the Blizzard household. I have always been a believer in the medicinal qualities of mushrooms. Kristen and I got more serious about the medicinals this year when COVID peaked our interest in boosting our immune systems. I am not starry-eyed eyed about medicinal mushrooms: they are neither panacea nor miracle cure. There is a large body of research consistently indicating that mushrooms improve immune system function and maybe even more.

While tincture is not the only way to enjoy the medicinal qualities of mushrooms, it is the topic of this blog post. My favorite tincture technique is a double extraction which means the mushroom is soaked in alcohol and then in hot water, each of which extracts different qualities from the mushroom. Some people use a triple extraction which means an initial cold-water soak is performed. Others use a “Spagyric” technique where the solid remains of the soak are burned and the ash added back into the tincture.  Many other techniques exist.

Figuring out the best way to extract the medicinal qualities from mushrooms is quite troubling. Do different mushrooms deserve different treatments? What is the best technique? How long to soak? At what temperatures? There are many questions! There are also very few answers. There is hardly any research to provide guidance. Just to be perfectly clear: we are not experts. I am just going to tell you what we do and why we do it that way. I’m sure there are other methods that are equally viable.

I have relied mainly on four resources to hone techniques and produce results:

1. Chinese herbal medicine has been using mushrooms for thousands of years. We pay attention to the traditional techniques and pick the brain of our favorite practitioner: David  Teitler of Carbondale Acupuncture Center.
2. Robert Dale Rogers, RH is the author of The Fungal Pharmacy and Medicinal Mushrooms – The Human Clinical Trials. His books offer a wealth of information, both from Western medicinal research and traditional medicinal usages. While they don’t contain all the answers, they do an excellent job of summarizing the existing research and tradition for each mushroom. I use both as research guides.
3. Tradd Cotter is the author of Organic Mushroom Farming and Remediation. Tradd is a researcher and his book shares good technique for making safe and effective tinctures. If you are going to buy tincture, I’d recommend Mushroom Mountain’s MycoMatrix brand.
4. Christopher Hobbs has a brand new book out in 2021 called Medicinal Mushrooms which is also excellent. He has an excellent recipe water only single tincture.  Also, great recipes also for creating powders and edible fungus body recipes.  This article below is focused on the double extraction tek.

The Tincture Recipe

Without further ado, here is how I create tincture, in 4 super easy steps:

Start with a mason jar and dried & powdered mushrooms.  Usually a coffee grinder is good for powdering the dried mushroom.

1. Soak 1/2 of the mushrooms in 190 proof Everclear for 2 weeks, shaking regularly.  The mushrooms should be covered by the everclear.
2. Strain, retaining mushroom solids, and set aside liquid.
3. Add unused 1/2 of mushrooms to the alcohol drained mushroom solids and soak in hot water (130-160 degrees) for 12 hours using a crockpot set to warm.
4. Strain out all mushroom solids and then combine water and infused alcohol in a 3:1 ratio (3 water/1 alcohol) or 20-25% alcohol.

I have refined this technique over time and find the following tips helpful:

• I prefer to use dried mushrooms over fresh now, mainly because it makes the alcohol to mushroom calculations easier.  Another benefit is I can get a lot more actual mushroom fiber into the alcohol when it is dried (and reduced in volume therefore) Fresh mushrooms bring a lot of H2O to the game.

• I grind the mushrooms up in a grinder to break them down allowing the extract to work more efficiently. This makes a big difference.  Recently, I upgraded to the Vitamix Flour Mill attachment which is very effective.

•  I use Everclear Grain Alcohol, but any alcohol will work as long as you adjust your final ratio of alcohol to water. Our 3:1 ratio is based on using 190 proof alcohol. There are many fine distilled products that are awesome go ahead and use your local distillery’s 190 proof grain alcohol!
• Honestly I don’t measure much… fill the mason jar with ground ‘shrooms and pour enough Everclear to cover the solids by an inch. When I strain out the Everclear, I measure it and then add 3 times the amount of water back to the solids (along with the new fresh solids). After I strain out the water in the last step, I may add some fresh tap water to make sure it is equal to 3X the amount of alcohol. 
• Straining can suck. After much trial and error, I now pour it all into a fine cheesecloth or nut-milk bag and use a potato ricer to gently squeeze the juice out of that bag. I am 150% OK with having fine particulate in our final product.  Conical metal filters, jelly bags, nut-milk bags, potato ricers are also possibilities.  Try starting with small batches (not full quart jars!) because it is much easer to train a cup or a pint than a quart.
• You can pour boiling water over our mushrooms and let them sit for 12 hours for the second extraction. I got a better product when we kept the water warm overnight in a crockpot set to warm.
  • I gauge the quality of our water extraction by the amount of polysaccharides visible in the water. You see this as the “cloudy stuff” in the final product. You want a lot of that! You will not actually see the cloudy polysaccharides until after the alcohol is added back to the water, which causes an instant visual reaction.
  • I try to keep the temperature between 130 and 160 because research indicates that the water soluble medicinal components can degrade at higher temps.  I don’t stress it if it is a little hot but do try to avoid letting it boil for sure.
  • I currently use a Magical Butter Machine for the overnight soak and set it to either 130 or 160 degrees. We often only run it for an hour or two and then let it sit because some combos can get “gummy” and then overheat, notably lions mane, maitake and other soft gourmet mushrooms.  Turkey tail and reishi are the easiest to work with. We love our Magical Butter machine for extracting medicinals!
• We store the tincture in a cool dark place – the pantry.

We use our tinctures in dropper bottles and take 2-4 dropper fulls of each mushroom tincture each day. Make sure to shake them before use, they should have lots of particulate and cloudy stuff floating around. I personally put it into my coffee in the morning since I am not a big fan of the taste of these tinctures and coffee covers up the flavors perfectly. Lately we have been combining all our tinctures into one bottle in equal measures for the sake of convenience.  

Those dropper bottles also seem to breathe a bit, and the alcohol can evaporate through the rubber stopper. We don’t use them for long-term storage, rather, we refill them when needed.  We keep our tincture in glass liquor bottle for long-term storage.

The Medicinal Mushrooms

There are many different mushroom species that you can turn into tincture. We tend to focus on the ones we forage ourselves (except for cordyceps, which we grow). 50% of our tincture intake is typically composed of a foraged polypore stack (Reishi, Turkey Tail, Artist Conk, Red Belted Polypore, etc). With no proof, we do prefer to “stack” our mushrooms, introducing variety into our medicinal diet.

Please note: I am not going to get into the medicinal benefits of the mushrooms… no point in regurgitating what you can read yourself in Rogers’ aforementioned books. They certainly impact gastro-intestinal, blood sugar, immunity, and anti-tumor. I think that these tinctures should be ingested every day to impart their benefits.  

Warning: these mushrooms are known to affect blood sugars and can be blood thinners. If you have health conditions relating to blood sugar or take blood thinning drugs, be careful and consult with your doctor first. In fact if you have any serious health conditions, consult with your doctor first. 

Reishi

Reishi is the grand-daddy of medicinal mushrooms.  We typically use Ganoderma oregonense but I believe G. sessile, G. tsugae and of course G. lucidum are medicinal equivalents. Look for white pores on bottom (indicate freshness) and make sure to slice up before drying, they get rock-hard after dry.

Artist’s Conk

Ganoderma applanatum) is a close cousin to Reishi and pretty easy to find. We also use Western Artists Conk (Ganoderma brownii) interchangeably.

Red-Belted Polypore

Fomitopsis pinicola makes a really thick and even sticky tincture when fresh specimens are used.

Turkey Tail

Trametes versicolor is well known for its anti-tumor qualities and is prescribed by doctors (or at least in its industrially processed pharmaceutical drug derivation) along with chemotherapy.  It is an easy mushroom to work with in the tinctures.

Lion’s Mane

Hericium erinaceous is classically used but we also use H. coralloides, H. abietes and H. americanum in our tinctures based on what we can forage. Hericium is relatively easy to grow at home if you want to try! Lion’s Mane is exciting because it helps with brain-function and has some highly compelling human trials. Ultimately, consuming this mushroom fresh or dried every day might be better than tinctures, it is so tasty, it doesn’t need to be put into a tincture.

Cordyceps

Cordyceps militaris is another mushroom we cultivate at home. These are probably impossible to forage in enough quantity to make a tincture. The good news is that Cordyceps are increasingly being cultivated in the USA; dried and un-processed Cordyceps are widely available for purchase, especially in Asian markets.  BTW, they taste good and are easy to throw a handful into soup or brew into a tea.

Chaga

Inonutus Obliquus is one of our favorites. We drink chaga and find the taste quite delightful.  We like the simple tea enough to drink daily, but it is a potent medicine and should not be over-consumed.  It is perhaps the only mushroom on this list we would say that about.  I often grind it fine (to maximize extraction), brew it for a day or two at 160 degrees, and then freeze-dry the whole batch, making a potent powdered chaga that can be instantly added to hot water.  You can brew this at extremely high temperatures in a pressure cooker or instant-pot and extract even more medicinal compounds according to some studies. Of course it can be tinctured too.

Maitake

Grifola frondosa is a highly regarded medicinal mushroom. We haven’t added it to our tincture regimen because we have not foraged enough to use for that purpose… yet.  Update: 2021 was the year, and now we make this too.

Do you tincture? Have any tips or tricks that work well for you? Let us know in the comments!

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