Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders
Operate or tend cooking equipment, such as steam cooking vats, deep fry cookers, pressure cookers, kettles, and boilers, to prepare food products.
This is a specialization of
Food Processing WorkersCareer Overview Video
AI Impact Assessment
AI Resilience Score
Score 3/6: low AI task exposure, limited human advantage means AI will assist but humans remain essential
How we calculated this:
13% of tasks can be accelerated by AI
+1% projected (2024-2034)
EPOCH score: 9/25
Key Responsibilities
- Clean, wash, and sterilize equipment and cooking area, using water hoses, cleaning or sterilizing solutions, or rinses.
- Read work orders, recipes, or formulas to determine cooking times and temperatures, and ingredient specifications.
- Observe gauges, dials, and product characteristics, and adjust controls to maintain appropriate temperature, pressure, and flow of ingredients.
- Measure or weigh ingredients, using scales or measuring containers.
- Tend or operate and control equipment, such as kettles, cookers, vats and tanks, and boilers, to cook ingredients or prepare products for further processing.
- Record production and test data, such as processing steps, temperature and steam readings, cooking time, batches processed, and test results.
- Set temperature, pressure, and time controls, and start conveyers, machines, or pumps.
- Remove cooked material or products from equipment.
- Collect and examine product samples during production to test them for quality, color, content, consistency, viscosity, acidity, or specific gravity.
- Pour, dump, or load prescribed quantities of ingredients or products into cooking equipment, manually or using a hoist.
Education & Training
Typical Entry Education
High school diploma or equivalent
Time to Job Ready
0-1 years
Based on Job Zone 2. For formal education duration only, see education_duration.
Technology Skills
Key Abilities
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Find jobs and training programs for food cooking machine operators and tenders- Median salary: $39K/year
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Compensation Details
Based on 29,730 employed workers
Also Known As
Data from O*NET 30.1 and BLS Occupational Employment Statistics
O*NET Code: 51-3093.00