Dear chefs, what’s that weird tea towel hanging from your belt?
Professional chefs usually wear a chef’s jacket, special chef’s trousers and the most inelegant shoes ever sold (but they are comfortable). Optional: a chef’s hat and a scarf around the neck. But what is that weird cloth dangling by their side?
That chef’s jacket protects against splashes, pans tipping over and other sudden disasters. That’s why old-fashioned chef’s jackets also have those strange buttons: with one tug, you can pull it off. Not to strip for the dishwasher, but to get a chef’s jacket covered in boiling-hot water or – even worse – deep-frying oil off your body in a second.
On your feet all day
A chef’s hat is super warm and looks pretty silly, but it is useful nevertheless: no hairs in the food. In traditional kitchens, the rule is: the taller the hat, the higher the rank. Well, everyone can figure out the purpose of an apron for themselves, and those ugly shoes make sense when you stand and walk all day. Then even Crocs suddenly seem quite appealing…
Toreador
But that cloth most chefs have hanging from their apron is a mystery. It gives the whole outfit a certain flair, like a toreador’s cape. What is it? At food-service wholesalers, such a thing is simply called a chef’s towel. They are generally somewhat larger, and especially longer, than an ordinary tea towel, and the fabric is a little thicker. Chefs can use it to take hot pans off the heat, quickly wipe down a workbench or dry their hands.
Bouillon
Any chef who has ever taken a hot tray out of the oven with a damp chef’s towel knows this: it is wise to grab a clean, dry towel in time. Also because you can almost hear the filth in such a damp, warm towel simmering and multiplying.
Belt
Useful at home too? Perhaps if you want to pretend you are a professional chef, or if you are too lazy to walk back and forth to the towel hook when you have wet hands, it can be useful to hang a chef’s towel from your belt at home too. But seriously: at home, you simply have oven mitts for hot baking dishes, all your pans have insulated handles, and without the matching chef’s jacket, trousers and clogs, most people will just wonder why you have pulled a dirty cloth through the belt loop of your jeans. So don’t.
