Plan, prepare, cook and serve GapFill

There are four main stages to making dishes. Planning, preparing, cooking and  showingservingtastingchecking. Each have their own skills and techniques, which you should be able to understand and demonstrate. Whether you're making a single dish or multiple dishes, there are several important considerations you should make throughout the process. 

• Firstly  writerestorereadlook at the task or recipe carefully. Make sure you understand exactly what you're making and who you are making it for. 
• When making dishes, consider how much  timeenergyflavourmoney you have available and how long a dish, or each dish, will take to make. In an exam you can't overrun on time, and in a food business you don't want to keep customers waiting. 
•  CostsProfitsIncomesLosses are important to keep in mind as well. Dishes with lots of ingredients, high quality ingredients or ingredients that are harder to acquire will be more expensive to make - and will therefore need to cost more for  inspectorscarnivorescostumersconsumers
• The final stage of creating dish is its  presentationclean-updisposalpreservation, and this must be carefully planned to make dishes as visually  appallingappealingappeasingstable as possible.
• Once a dish is complete, you'll need to  eviscerateevaluateevolvereconsider it. This includes examining what went right and want went wrong, and how you could improve the dish next time. Knowing and using  visualsensorytexturalsensible descriptors correctly will help with this process. 

While these are important considerations when making both single and multiple dishes, making several dishes in a single session creates much more of a challenge. Time  reportingmanagementmanageringhandling is very important, and having a  doveduckmouseswan-tailed action plan in place will make things much easier. This is where multiple tasks are carried out at the same time, for example searing meat in a frying pan while you reduce a sauce for it in another pan, to ensure that all elements of a dish (or dishes) are finished at the same time and can be served together without anything getting cold, becoming overcooked or being  unctuousunderwhelmedundercookedundulating. Knowing how to adjust cooking times and test food  cookednessservabilitypreparationreadiness are skills that help with this.

As with all food production, when making dishes you must follow food safety rules. For example, using a claw grip or  towerbridgegapfinger hold when using knives, and keeping hands, equipment and surfaces clean to prevent  decontaminationcross-contaminationcross-detonationcross-touching. You should also be able to demonstrate your ability to pick appropriate skills and techniques to produce dishes. For example, braising a tough cut of meat instead of steaming it, to ensure a tender result, or sieving flour to add more air to cake batters, rather than adding ingredients all at once. Conversely, you could add ingredients all at once to save time - this is the kind of decision you will need to make when creating dishes.