I Cleaned a Deep Fryer Today

The zen art of focused attention is not appreciated in our want it now commercialized consumer society. I was at work today (at a fast food restaurant) and like every one else in the world, or at least the rest of the people like me I was working hard at finishing my job as fast as possible while achieving the best end result I am capable of.

We have four very large deep fryers and part of my job is to filter or change the oil daily. I have only recently been given this position (kitchen porter) and the fryers had been neglected in the area of deep cleaning. In the defense of the restaurant the oil is always clean and by no means does what I am talking about effect the quality or safety of the food. That having been said they were caked with congealed orange-ish greasy sticky fat, and in addition to that there was plenty of charred baked on carbon.

I have been in my position as kitchen porter for exactly one week and I have an entire restaurant to bring up to my admittedly high standards, so I had not yet gotten to the arduous task of really bringing these fryers back to life. I have however managed to get the dumpster area so clean I would honestly eat off the concrete directly next to either of the bins. I have also given that treatment to the back area, the walk in freezer, the walk in cooler, the dry stock area, and the sidewalks outside. In my opinion this is an impressive amount of progress in one week.

So I was done with three out of four fryers, and my manager tells me as I am draining the fourth that she wants one of them to shine today. This will be my "task" for today. I found her wording to be rather condescending, but hey, she is the boss. So I say to her that I don't have a putty knife to scrape the crap off of them and at this point of decay a steel wool pad is a preferred scrubbing tool. She responds that I have everything I need and the job should only take five or ten minutes.

I proceed to collect all the materials required to complete my mission. Here is a complete list of what I had.

1. A green scratch pad
2. Husky (kind of like Ajax but for carbon on stainless steel)
3. A pairing knife
4. Latex gloves

An hour of sweating, scrubbing, burning the shit out of myself, and cursing loudly exactly two times the fryer were clean. I found myself more than a few times completely lost in the painstaking task of carefully removing the carbon and grease build up with the flat bit of a paring knife. During those times I thought to myself about pride and making sure that your work is the best work you can do regardless of what it is that you do. When the day comes I own my own restaurant and I require my brigade to deep clean the kitchen every night after service I can tell them honestly that I did what they are doing but it was worse.

I came home today with water blisters from 360 degree stainless steal, but more importantly I walked out of work today knowing that I did good honest work with improvised tools. I relaized today that I can be a real chef because I can do the work. And even if I am the only one willing to do it I can trust myself to do it right.

I hope no matter who you are or what you do that you will be or have been asked to do a ridiculous task at an insane time with no tools. There is no better feeling than walking away knowing you did the fucking job and you did it well.