Tag: Professional Chefs

Your Options at Hand

The need for professional chefs has become popular in the modern world. People now have lesser time preparing meals at home and many mothers have now become essential parts of the corporate community which naturally consume the majority a mom’s time. People now also want meals that are professionally done. Further, eating is not just a fixed part of everyday living but had already become an indispensable part of social life. Thus, it is only natural that innumerable people have already realized the need for people who would specialize in preparing food using art.

Due to the above reasons, working as a chef is becoming a sought-after opportunity. And many people who have the innate talent of using creativity in cooking are now seeing lots of windows of opportunities in the world of culinary arts.

While it may not be possible to succeed in this world overnight, there are various avenues that you could take so that you could advance in this industry.

For most people, there are just three options. One is through climbing the ladder of culinary arts education, second is to become an apprentice of a professional chef and the third is to set up a restaurant and develop from there on.

Well, we all know that the third option is the road less traveled since not most of us have the money to establish a restaurant and learn from the experiences that this could incur. Besides, not all of us are perceptive and skilled enough to do both learning and establishing of a business at the same time. It would either be that the businessman wanting to become a chef in return would specialize in only one field. It would either be that he’ll focus on honing his skills alone or focus on the business part often restaurant and hire professional chefs to work for him. Both are satisfying enough but either one of the two has to be sacrificed.

Some world-class chefs though chose to start in their own kitchens. While there are large discrepancies in the setting of work as chef in fast-faced restaurants and small home kitchens, both could have their individual benefits that could help in training a person towards a career as chef.

Taking the option of educating oneself in culinary arts is normally the choice of people wanting to become a chef. Formal settings are applied and pedagogical structure of education is followed. There are various options in culinary arts education and each school might present its own system.

There are schools offering a Bachelors Degree in Culinary Arts, others may provide certificates on culinary arts education but there are other institutes that offer courses on Associate in Applied Sciences Culinary Arts. If you are truly serious and sure about pursuing a career in culinary arts, your best and fastest option is a bachelor’s degree. However, if you are just testing the grounds it is best to take short courses that could help you explore the world of culinary arts while not taking as much time from you.

There are also programs that could accommodate you if you cannot attend full-time classes. These would allow you to bend your schedule depending on your flexibility. Additionally, there are apprenticeship programs and on-the-job trainings that could also expose you to this industry.

Apprenticeship is also among the popular option. An informal education and training from a professional chef will put you on the more practical side of being a chef. You get to see the reality and you get real and on-the-spot trainings.

A job as a chef could be very grueling but any form of training could prepare you on the demanding task that this career might pose on you.

The Factors of How to Become a Personal Chef

You might have encountered a survey asking teenagers of what they want to hire in case they have excess money to spend on luxuries. Many answered- a personal chef.

This survey only recognizes the want of people to have people pampering them with palatable foods and delectable menus. And who would not want some leisure, right?

A personal chef is someone who prepares and cooks food specifically for a person who has hired him. It may either be for some special occasions only but other people, who have the many enough, may even hire professional chefs, for the leisure of fine dining right at their houses.

Personal chefs could be compared to old maids who have learned to perfect numerous menus to serve their house. The difference however is that professional chefs have formal education and have attended formal classes and therefore, practical applications of whatever programs they have chose dot attend. Also, personal chefs are hired and are paid according to the degree of mastery they have. But that is difficult to measure really that’s why it is best that they are paid according to the dictates of the present career value and several other factors.

Personal chefs are undoubtedly the personal choices of the clients who hired them. They have the pleasure of preparing and making menus that would suit the tastes of the people they cook for. This is why it is vital that both the chef and the client have some degree of connection when it comes to taste and food choices.

Often, people interchange the jobs of personal chefs and caterers. There are main differences and we would site portions of them here.

For one, caterers are most likely businesspeople who are hired to create beverages, food and service functions on events ranging from intimate family dinner to weddings, parties and conferences. Personal chefs, on the other hand, are paid to cook meals for individual families and in-home food services for dinner parties.

Apart from what we have mentioned here, there are other several factors that determine an excellent personal chef from that of a not-so-good one.

Personal taste
We have earlier mentioned that to be able to satisfy the needs of the client’s taste buds, the personal chef and the client must have some degree of connection in terms of food choices. This might be quite hard to find and it is practically the reason why there are too many occasions where clients change their personal chefs.

Diversity of knowledge
Maybe you like a particular cuisine or maybe you like a particular way of preparing and presenting food. But fixation on a specific cuisine may not be too healthy for both the client and the personal chefs. The knowledge on food diversity is crucial since this would likely give better options for both parties. Therefore, the personal chef must be able to practice and perform several types of cuisines that would satisfy the need for multiplicity of meal choices.

Attitude
Apart from taste for fine foods, creativity and hygiene, you also need people skills. Whether you like the idea or not, you have to sell yourself to people. To make people recognize your potentiality of giving services to them and your credibility on satisfying their need for well-prepared food. This is why it is important that you practice good attitude towards your client and your assistants.

Education as a Requirement to Become a Chef

How does one become a chef? Many people have asked these and each may have different answers to offer.

A chef is the overseer of all the activities in a kitchen. He is the person that prepares, innovates and cooks food professionally. There are various types of chef careers that one could try looking into. But each has its own requirement. But central among them is- the love for food.

Without the capacity to create and innovate recipes, chefs would be turned into mere cooks. But even the cooks could be called chef if he is working professionally and he is the only one working in the kitchen since basically, chef is the French term for a chief. Thus, the chef in any kitchen is just the manager of every business occurring in it.

So, what are the paths towards becoming a chef?

Well, many would tell you to get educated in the industry of kitchen, garlic and Caesars Salad. You could start with a one-year program from a school that offers culinary arts. However, you also have the choice to enroll for a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts. Which ever way, your only real hope is to have a break or you might end up preparing gravies.

In formal education, you could further have options. Among the many are apprenticeship and institutional training. The latter delves deeper on study program while apprenticeship helps students learn by observing what and how professional chefs do it while being employed.

Apprenticeship seems to be the best option since it will not incur you to spend as much as with enrolling yourself into an institution. Plus you get the pleasure of observing people do some real great stuff like turning ordinary ingredient into extraordinary meals. Through observation, you will be able to really examine if you the vocation for cooking.

This kind of training will also expose you to the core actions of a chef’s life and give you the real element of hands-on experiences. This would also give you the standpoint between choosing if you truly want to pursue culinary arts as a career.

Any school on culinary arts would be able to help you get formal class studies and application. Be sure to check on the credentials of the instructors and the curriculum. Remember that you’ll be paying cash for them, it’s just proper that you get the other end of the bargain.

Your training and education could be your entry towards a chef’s career. It will arm you with tangible proofs of your proficiency in cooking and preparing food. But still, nothing beats passion on cooking and sheer love for food.

After school you will need to have some years of experiences. You might start as a dishwasher or as a help on the executive chef. You might even have tasks such as preparation of utensils or peeling and cutting ingredients.

But that doesnt matter since all you need is to survive this stage. This must not discourage you from pursuing your course of life. Instead, look at these experiences as extra trainings that will help you find better-paying jobs afterwards. This hard training will hone you more to become resolute in pursuing careers.

After years of dealing with this kind of life, you can now actually move into the real business of a chef. As you move up the ladder, you will take with you the education you earned from formal training and apprenticeship, hardwork and achievement.