About This Career

Operates or tends cooking equipment, such as steam cooking vats, deep fry cookers, pressure cookers, kettles, and boilers, to prepare food products.

This career is part of the Manufacturing cluster Production pathway.

A person in this career:

• Cleans, washes, and sterilizes equipment and cooking area, using water hoses, cleaning or sterilizing solutions, or rinses.
• Reads work orders, recipes, or formulas to determine cooking times and temperatures, and ingredient specifications.
• Observes gauges, dials, and product characteristics, and adjusts controls to maintain appropriate temperature, pressure, and flow of ingredients.
• Measures or weighs ingredients, using scales or measuring containers.
• Tends or operates and controls equipment, such as kettles, cookers, vats and tanks, and boilers, to cook ingredients or prepare products for further processing.
• Records production and test data, such as processing steps, temperature and steam readings, cooking time, batches processed, and test results.
• Sets temperature, pressure, and time controls, and starts conveyers, machines, or pumps.
• Removes cooked material or products from equipment.
• Collects and examines product samples during production to test them for quality, color, content, consistency, viscosity, acidity, or specific gravity.
• Pours, dumps, or loads prescribed quantities of ingredients or products into cooking equipment, manually or using a hoist.

Working Conditions and Physical Demands

People who do this job report that:

• You would often handle loads up to 20 lbs., sometimes up to 50 lbs. You might do a lot of lifting, carrying, pushing or pulling.
• Work in this occupation involves use of protective items such as safety shoes, glasses, gloves, hearing protection, a hard hat, or personal flotation devices
• Conditions are very hot (above 90 F) or very cold (under 32 F)
• Work in this occupation involves using your hands to hold, control, and feel objects more than one-third of the time
• Work in this occupation requires being inside most of the time
• Work in this occupation involves making repetitive motions more than one-third of the time
• Work in this occupation involves standing more than one-third of the time
• Work in this occupation involves walking or running more than one-third of the time

Working in this career involves (physical activities):

• Seeing clearly up close

Work Hours and Travel

• Regular working hours and limited travel