When choosing a culinary school one must observe certain aspects of interest, size, focus, experience, etc.? For me personally, I would go to Cincinnati State for their culinary program, it is much less than the acclaimed Culinary Art institute Of America. Prices for the culinary program at Cincinnati state is around $20,000 for their two year program, in comparison to the exorbitant anual fee of $46,000 for Culinary art institute of America, this seems like the best school for me; and besides Cincinnati State is very well known for its culinary program.
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Cincinnati State |
While going through culinary school aspiring chefs aquire various skill sets that are required in becoming a sucessfull chef; learning how to cook different meats, how to cut them in a variety of ways, and also how to prepare different sauces that vary in complexity.
For example chicken is a very simplistic dish, there are many different ways to cook chicken.
For example chicken is a very simplistic dish, there are many different ways to cook chicken.
A few simple ways are searing, grilling, sautéing, and boiling.
Here are a variety of ways that chicken may look after being prepared in a different manners.
Seared
Grilled
Sauteed
Boiled
One main misconception of being or becoming a chef is that it's all about the cooking. If you really think about it, you can understand that being a chef takes much more.
• Intellect
• Passion
• Perseverance
• Mathematics and Communication Abilities
• Responsibility
• Some would even say you need to be a scientist to be a chef
While learning to become a chef, you are really pushed towards learning how to cook, and also the other essentials. The 6 adjectives used above really show the qualities of a good chef, and what it takes to become one. Let's think about what a chefs typical day is in a few words. Wake up, go to the restaurant, CHECK INVENTORY (how much of everything do you have) , talk to the waiters and waitresses and explain to them what the daily menu will look like depending upon the inventory that is currently available, show assistants how to cook anything new that the chef may have tried making and thought it would be good on the menu, finally cooking from 9 in the morning to even 12 at night every single day, and repeating the process with not much time on their hands for personal wants.
Lets break this down even more. Most chefs wake up at 5:30 to 6:00 in the morning, and go to work until 12:00 at night, this would require passion, and an incredible amount of responsibility. While a chef checks his inventory, he really needs to know everything about recipes and what calls for what, this would take a lot of mathematics, calculating ounces and everything that is necessary to cook with or measure with. Before the cooking begins he must have a talk with the waiters and waitresses; making sure that everything is in order and they know what everything is, especially if the chef makes a new item and the waiters or waitresses do not know what it is when they take their first glance at it, doing all of this would take responsibility and a lot of communication skills. Chefs may be very good at cooking, but they cannot do everything all at once, and most certainly not on their own. The chef must have many assistants that know how to cook exactly what the chef wants. The chef will need amazing verbal and communication skills, kitchens can be very loud, and very hectic, anyone who cannot raise their voice and say the right things, the chef will fail at his job, and essentially fail at his passion. While a chef might have a little leisure time after or before work, he or she may experiment new sauces or preparing food in different ways, putting their own personal twist on a food, making the chef a scientist.
There are chefs all over the world that are trying to get their recipes out to the world, to show their passion, to make other people happy. One of which is the creator of the blog Smitten Kitchen. Here is a link to the very good cooking blog that will show you many different recipes.
http://smittenkitchen.com/
In my opinion this author does a mediocre job explaining the typical routine of a chef. http://www.hcareers.com/us/resourcecenter/tabid/306/articleid/289/default.aspx
Simply put, I am an Eighteen year old aspiring chef that attends Sycamore High School who plans on going to Cincinnati State for their highly renowned culinary program. I like to say I specialize in mainly Italian food, I work on a range from simple to complex level recipes and i put twists on already made recipes. I have two hopes, one to become a highly regarded chef, and secondly to become a private chef while traveling the world and getting to know all different types of people. All of my research and answering questions has really help me understand what i need to do become a chef, choose my path and what school I will be attending, and even the style of cooking that I wish to specialize in. Furthermore, I now know exactly what I need to do in order to achieve my goal and fulfill my passion.
