Refurbished Commercial Bain Maries

A wet bain marie heats the pans through water, which gives gentle, even heat and suits saucy and moist food — curries, casseroles, vegetables. A dry bain marie heats the well directly, which is faster to come up, needs no water management, and suits food that should not be steamed, such as crumbed and fried items.

Wet units need filling, topping up and draining, and the water needs managing at the end of service. Dry units are less work but harsher on delicate product and more likely to catch at the edges of a pan. If the menu is mostly wet dishes, buy wet; if it is mixed, a dry unit with lids is usually the more forgiving buy.

Freestanding is the default for a service counter, because it brings the wells to a working height, carries more pans, and usually gives you storage or a heated cupboard underneath. Benchtop units suit a short run of pans added to an existing counter and can be moved or stored out of season.

The constraint on a benchtop unit is the bench: it has to be strong enough, deep enough, and near a power point that can carry the load. If the counter already has refurbished commercial kitchen furniture doing other work, a freestanding unit frees the bench entirely.

Count the dishes on the menu that have to be held at once, then allow a pan for each, and remember that two half pans give you twice the choice of one full pan in the same space. Gastronorm containers come in standard fractions, so a well is described by how many full-size pans it will take.

Depth matters as much as area. Deep pans hold more but the product at the bottom spends longer in the unit, which is fine for a casserole and poor for vegetables. Shallow pans swapped more often give better food. Buy the pans from the same supplier as the unit where you can, because small differences between brands affect how a pan seats in the well.

It will if the food sits too long or the pans are the wrong depth, which is a service problem rather than a machine problem. A bain marie holds; it does not improve. Food goes in hot and ready, and the clock starts.

What helps: lids on anything that will take them, shallow pans turned over frequently, water kept topped up on a wet unit, and the unit set to hold rather than to its highest setting. Keep a probe thermometer at the counter rather than relying on a dial, because a dial tells you about the well and not about the food.

The well first, for pitting, scale and any sign of a previous leak, then the elements and the thermostat, then the drain and tap on a wet unit. The well on a commercial unit is stainless steel — 304 is the food-safety grade used in Australian kitchens — and heavy scale inside a wet well tells you about the water and the cleaning history.

Then the practical things: the power lead and plug, the castors or feet, the lids and pan bars if they are meant to be included, and whether the pans themselves come with it. Ask us what was replaced during the refurbishment rather than what was inspected.

No, and this is the single most common misuse. A bain marie does not have the power to bring cold food up through the temperature range quickly, so food reheated in one spends a long time in exactly the range you want it out of. Reheat in an oven or a commercial microwave, then transfer it hot.

If reheating is a regular part of service, that is what a regeneration oven is built for. Keep the bain marie for the job it does well, which is holding hot food through a service without cooking it further.