Local catering companies carry out events while dealing with extreme heat

The Coachella Valley continues to see dangerous heat above a hundred and ten degrees.

Several event and catering companies throughout the valley are carrying on with events, and they're making accommodations while they work in the extreme conditions.

Executive chef and co-owner of Ruby and Snow Catering and Event Planning, Ashelanna Ruby, makes sure to take care of her staff while working in triple digit heat.

Ruby shares, "I have to remind them to stop and drink. We can get so focused that we forget to stop and hydrate. We sweat a lot. We’re working with a lot of hot equipment. We’re working with a 500 to 600 degree grill on top of the weather."

Ruby's catering company managed to work on three separate events throughout the day. One of them was a private dining experience in La Quinta.

Although most of the food was prepared indoors, her sous-chef did step outside to do some grilling.

"Grilling on a normal day to day basis is already tough, but when you're beating down to the 115 degree heat and then you're standing in front of a 300 degree fire it's very bad," says sous-chef Christian Rivera.

Rivera tells me other ways he deals with heat, "I do come back intermittently. I try not to stand in front of the grill more than six or seven minutes at a time because you do dehydrate very quickly.” 

Ruby also does the following to keep her team cool, "We also wear wet towels on the back of our neck that helps us stay cool. We wear a lot of sunblock, try to stay indoors as much as possible, and take a lot of breaks."

Suzy's gourmet catering also prefers preparing and cooking food indoors, especially on hotter days.

Chef Suzy Giraldo shares, “If they want their event outside, then what we do is we have the food inside, but they'll serve it on platters outside, we don't keep the food outside. It's just too hot for that.” 

Giraldo stressed the importance of food safety, especially while serving food on warmer days, "Like the grilled shrimp or things like that, we would have it on crushed ice. So if you're going to serve it outside, on platters, we would put it in crushed ice, to keep it safe.” 

We can't forget one great way to beat the heat it to stay home, and enjoy the air conditioning.