How do I get my KM to understand that water won't keep food tender?

Change your descriptor. You keep saying it’s dry, they say it’s wet. Say it’s tough, chewy, pastey. Use a thesaurus until you push the right button.

Organise to have a sit down meal with them once a week, on a rotating day so you might eventually try everything.

Stop telling her they're complaining that it's dry, tell her they're complaining that it's overcooked and tough.

overcook the shit out of a piece of chicken, dip it in water, and then give it to her.

The proteins constrict and force out water when heat is applied. The slower this happens (lower temperature) affects the constriction (loss of water and muscle toughness)

You can’t teach the unteachable…I retired as a food service director at an independent community. The way you get things done is have the residents complain to corporate. Then sit back and watch what happens when corporate thinks it might affect the bottom line.

Make a “staff dinner” half using their current methods.

Half using more reasonable methods.

Have them discuss which they like better.

I am a new chef to assisted living. The biggest thing I have learned in 2 months of doing it is that 99% of assisted living “chefs” are terrible. They are unprofessional hacks that have no idea how to serve good food quickly. I will give them that they are forced to work under extreme budget restrictions on food and labor though. That part is hard.

This said, I have no advice for you. Good luck, come join my community if you can.

You don't. It's either wilful ignorance or apathy. Talk to management.

Go grab some baf beef jerky and put it in a cup of water. Offer your boss this as a steak dinner.

Boil the shit out of a chicken breast and give it to her. It’s boiled in water, so there’s no way it can be dry, right?

I see your KM graduated from the public school cafeteria school of food science. I ate too many hamburgers plucked from a tank of water+burger juice. Even as a elementary schooler I knew it didn’t work like that. I don’t blame them, they probably weren’t paid or funded enough to worry about anything beyond bare minimum nutrition. Fish seems even worse for this than those burger patties.

Dry is usually a symptom of lack of fat.

Oddly enough it is fat that makes things have a moist mouth feel.

Also 'moist mouth feel' made me feel dirty while typing it.

How tf are they a kitchen manager if they don’t know how to properly cook food?

Baking meat is like child’s play… putting water onto a roasted beef dish is like a crime… unless you were stewing it in its own Juice for like 4-6 hours….. I’d burn the entire place down

Make her eat it?

Tell her they say it's overcooked. Teach the residents the difference if necessary. Maybe bring up the difference between actually poaching and overcooking. Not every protein requires the same amount of cook time, so look that up and tell them fish takes X time to cook at Y temp this is a receipe to poach chicken, see how they are different

Think about what happens when you make chicken stock. The flavor from the chicken ends up in the water, right? And if there’s salt involved in your cooking process, salt pulls moisture out of proteins, and that moisture ends up in your water bath instead of caramelizing on the outside of the protein and increasing the depth of flavor. Certain proteins benefit from a braise, like a chuck roast or lamb shank - tough muscles that need moisture and time to break down. Lean proteins like fish and chicken breast absolutely suffer when braised or boiled, you will get a drier end result than if you seared or baked or grilled or sautéed.

When you apply heat to proteins specifically they are expelling water and tightening up the microscopic areas that would hold moisture, hence why even if you cooked say a burger patty it will shrink, even in water. Heat is evaporating liquid from within the protein, that moisture is just getting mixed in with the surrounding water while the protein shrinks up and the liquid is unable to get back in. It’s why a medium rare steak is far more tender than anything well done, unless we get into braising which is essentially breaking down the structure entirely, which is why there’s such a sweet spot for things like brisket, any competition pit master would tell you they still want SOME bite to their ribs, brisket etc. it’s tender, but it’s not falling apart when you slice it.

Best way to change their mind is to show them. Do a side by side comparison, batch cooking proteins is all about timing. Your boss is worried about margin of error for getting food out. You’ll need new systems to ensure the food is going in at specifically the right time to come out cooked properly and not ever held too long to diminish the cook on it. Margin of error will increase but if the error is it basically being overcooked as it is now I say it’s no loss. Practise makes perfect.

Edit: Also just wanted to add if you or anyone else is interested in this kind of stuff buy yourself a copy of on food and cooking by Harold McGee. Invaluable information about the how’s and whys of everything to do with cooking.

Overcooked proteins coagulate and contract, expelling water out into the pan. The water in the pan doesn’t mean there is water left in the fish- in some cases it means the opposite.

Has she been forced to even eat this jacuzzi fish?

If they aren't tasting the food they're serving, they need to GTFO.

That's really important.

What's also important that I think your coworker doesn't understand is that senior citizens for the most part need their food to be very soft and tender, or even mushy. Dentures are a big pain in the ass.

Taste it coworker.

Bake one pan with water and one pan without, but both at the proper time to cook the fish perfectly.

Show her that the water isn’t the solution, it’s proper cooking time.

Ask if she would like to run an experiment, then cook one the right way, and give her one of hers and see which is better. Do this with all the cooks in the kitchen so everybody gets to try both ways together (yay team building!) and it'll give a little societal pressure for cooking it the right way.

Best way is cook one batch properly using a probe to take the product out when its properly cooked and compare side by side with her method.

Offer solutions, not problems. Be assertive, we are going to start doing it like this. People like it better.

In my experience when I worked in an assisted living facility, the residents would say it’s dry no matter what unless they could see the gravy/sauce on it.

File a grievance. Explain to your residents that they can file a grievance. It doesn't sound like your kitchen manager is a CDM so I'm assuming your facility contracts out dietary? They may be getting their instructions from higher up, this was common practice with a certain 'services group', and they aren't concerned about anything without a paper trail.

Proteins clump up more with heat and squeeze water out of muscle tissue. Denaturing is the process. https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/humannutrition/chapter/the-role-of-proteins-in-foods-cooking-and-denaturation/

You want some denaturing for tender and cooked. But go too far and you separate the tissue into water and harder lumps of everything else. Cooking in water has no bearing on the physical changes that proteins within your proteins undergo when heated to extreme (time or temp).

Maybe try explaining it with a sand castle metaphor if she grew up playing in sand. Well cooked meat is a pretty sand castle. You had to use wet sand...but not too wet or it won't hold it's shape and not too dry or same thing no holding together. If you cook something too long or too hot it's like pouring a bucket of water over the sand castle you wash out all the good structural water.

See if you can organize a food committee meeting with the residents and invite the KM. They might be harsh, but at least she would hear it in their words. Maybe comment cards at the tables would help too.

Water doesn’t give the impression of food being moist, fat does. It’s either the fish is frozen or overcooked, probably both. Freezing fish, or anything, breaks cell walls and causes moisture loss when it thaws-not a big deal but definitely doesn’t help. Over cooking forces out anything that is fluid, water, juices, fat, etc, because it over constricts the proteins. But there are a couple things that can help, a lot. Brining can help to keep moisture in the flesh through osmosis. And butter, if after the fish comes out of the oven/combi, it gets doused with burre monte or burre blanc you can trick the palate into perceiving moisture in the fish. The texture will probably always be fucked if it’s frozen, can’t do much about that.

Has she tried to food herself? Why don’t you just let her taste, instead of describing it?

She shouldn't be managing a kitchen if she can't oven bake basic proteins. Also, you don't need to cook the food with water in the pan. For example, if she cooks a chicken breast until it's 165 and than stores it an a pan with a little water or broth in it and keeps it hot held before service, this would be more effective as long as she isn't doing it hours before. You need a new kitchen manager.

I feel for the KM. a few complaints about being overcooked is 100x better than one case of raw/undercooked fish. these people have obviously had better, but it's hard to get mass quantities of anything to cook uniformly when the oven could be substandard and the recipes don't allow for much seasoning

Temp stuff. It should be coming out 5-10 degrees EARLY. Cooking based on timers is not reliable imo. It's only reliable when every fillet is exactly the same thickness, fat content, toughness, age, oven contents, etc etc. Basically never. Timers can get you close but you should be pulling food based on temp not time. You pull early because there will be carry over cooking that happens. Some cooks would even say pull sooner (I'm too much of a bitch to do much more than 10 degrees). It'll have to rest briefly but yea. Prevents overcooking

Also how long is this food sitting out? "whole sheet trays of redfish". For what? banquets? If you're batch cooking proteins and they're sitting in a hot well or whatever theres not a lot you can do. It'll be dry. Maybe add more acid (lemon, lime, vinegar etc) to draw saliva

Fish proteins are more akin to eggs than brisket in that when they are cooked they just get harder and harder, and dont have any sort of other substance that can melt out.

Do a taste test. Show them.

This sounds like a job for a sous-vide setup and a salamander/searzall. Don't kitchen managers like new toys?

Sous vide batch cooking is very easy. Use that same oven and put it on steam for 1 hour at the perfect temperature for the desired meat. Easy. If it's fish night, cover the fish tray with foil and steam it at 55⁰c or 130⁰f if they want well done steaks. Cook them at 65⁰c 150⁰f for old people I'd be slow cooking meats for them. That way she can put it in the night before and leave it until service time. Easy.

Can you convince the KM to taste the food and see what they're complaining about? Or are they the kind that likes their steaks well done with ketchup? 🤮😂

Find someone who knows how to cook? If you boil a chicken breast it'll be a tough dry pos. If you SEAR it the juices will be locked inside and you'll have a delicious moist piece of meat. This is cooking 101.

Reminds me of people who don't understand how water can dry out your skin.

The way I understand it is that when you cook a protein in liquid it dissolves and dispereses the fat in the liquid. Fat makes things moist.

Sometimes they are busy and just walking by and making a snap judgement. Doesn't mean your wrong (def not). If he does it again maybe recommend he review the food safety rules.

Look for another job. If giving your guests food that doesn't make them sick is your thing, there are plenty of restaurants that would be happy to have you.

If that doesn't work, keep on not getting everyone sick until he removes you from the schedule.