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Why does nobody warn you about overloading the walk-in on Friday prep?
A grizzled line cook named Ray with 20 years in the trenches gave me one piece of advice when I first started: never stack sheet pans more than four high on the walk-in shelves. I brushed it off as overkill and piled them six deep one Friday before a 250 cover night. By the time service started, the bottom pans were sitting in a pool of condensation and raw chicken juice from a leaky pan above. I had to toss about $180 worth of prepped protein and remake everything in 40 minutes while tickets piled up. Ray just looked at me and said "told you" without even smiling. Has anyone else had a walk-in disaster that cost them a whole prep day?
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skylerkelly15d ago
The four pan rule is real but it's not really about the pan count itself. What actually matters is airflow and how full the pans are, because a shallow pan of chicken stacked six high won't leak if nothing is pressing on it. The problem in your story sounds more like a bad seal or a pan filled too close to the rim, not the stacking height alone. So Ray's advice worked for you, but the real rule is never fill anything more than two thirds up and always check for dents in the pan edges before it goes in. Stack height is just the easy thing to point at when it all goes wrong.
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