Tag: Requirement To Become A Chef

The Single Requirement to Become a Chef

Has it ever occurred to you that you might have been born to pursue a career in culinary arts? We all have our paths to take and each individual has his separate career to practice. You might have wanted to become a physician yet all roads seem to go nowhere near to it. Or, you might have been wanting to become an artist only to find out that years later, all you want to do is settle down in a monastery and live a spiritual life. There are lots of possibilities and each could propose the prospect of wasting the time you dont have.

Once you get the feeling that you want something then let go of the reins and pursue it, this might be your only chance. So if you are thinking of spending your fruitful years as a chef then do everything you could to be able to arrive to your desired destination.

The key here is commitment. Once you have committed yourself onto something, you are likely to succeed. Commitment is like the shepherd that will drive you towards your destination. It is like the fueling that would deliver you towards the goals you have set prior to your decision to pursue the career.

Without commitment, you would not even stand a few months of works. Being a chef is quite a task and it needs some endurance. One has to endure long hours of standing for preparation of dishes. You might start as a potato peeler or a dishwasher or anything but someone who is preparing the dishes.

And one thing is for sure- being a chef is a hard stuff. It takes lots and lots of dedication.

Education
You need commitment on education. Normally, college ends a person’s education life. After which, everything is about making fortune and making a name in a chosen industry. Your career as a chef however, will require you to attend schoolagain. Yes, either you choose a one-year, two-year or a bachelor’s course, there surely is one path ahead of you.

If dream of making yourself into an executive chef or as head cooks, it is important that you have a number of years of training and formal education. Training alone would not only require you to sweat-til-you-drop but would also require lots of patience and endurance.

Normally, apprenticeship or internship is required if you want to get hired in a priority position. However, if you choose to be employed as a cook or food preparation worker, training comes from everyday work and not specifically from formal educational settings.

Earnings
It is hard to survive a life of a chef if all you are after for is prestige and money. There is not much money in this industry unless you work for some high-end restaurant or if you are the host of a lifestyle program centering on foods.

The median hourly earning of an ordinary chef ranges anywhere from $9-$15, depending on the establishment you are working for.

On day to day basis
The daily life of a chef is pretty exhausting. He has to prepare, plan and create recipes. Personally plan all the ingredients and cook the recipe. Order food supplies on all other necessary supplies and estimate food requirements for specific periods.

If you think you cannot endure these hassles, it is best that you reconsider your options in becoming a chef. However if you have passion for food you’ve got enough endurance to get you going through the toil each day possess, you would only have to brace yourself into committing the best of your years in your career as chef.

The Requirements to Become a Chef

Many people try to find out the different requirements to become a chef. Nowadays, becoming a chef is treated like becoming a doctor or a lawyer wherein one must have a degree or at least a certificate from a culinary school. However, you should realize that you can become a chef even without formal education. Here are some of the requirements to become a chef even without a certificate:

Exposure Most people who become chefs have had some sort of exposure to the art of cooking during their lives. This is one of the most essential requirements to become a chef. Exposure may come from parents, or even the house cook. Some aspiring chefs even go to different parts of the world just to gain exposure. Exposure to the art of cooking opens up a person to take an interest in it. Exposure also gives a person knowledge regarding the basics of cooking. This also gives a person a standard on what his or her cooking should equal or surpass.

Passion Interest alone is not enough to become a great chef. Passion is the main requirement to become a chef. You need to be passionate a bout food. You should see it for its effects in both body and spirit. A great chef knows how to play the heartstrings of people simply by adjusting the flavors of a dish. Passion is at the heart of every dish. You might follow a recipe to the letter but without passion, you will not be able to truly make a dish delicious.

Discernment One of the most basic requirements to become a chef is discernment. You need to be able to tell whether something tastes good or not. The best chefs are able to discern flavors beyond the basic sweet, sour, salty, bitter and hot. To a true chef, flavors are like different shades of colors and the number of combinations that one can achieve is infinite. People are usually able to tell when a specific dish lacks something. However, it takes a chef to truly root out what exactly is that something that will complete the recipe. This requirement to become a chef can come naturally to some people while others have to get it through years of experience.

Curiosity The difference between a cook and a chef is the fact that while a cook follows a recipe, a chef creates recipes. In order to create a dish, a chef must be willing to explore new ideas. Curiosity is a requirement to become a chef because this trait will allow a person to explore the unknown and ask the question “what if?”

Curiosity will enable the chef to create whole new dishes and go against the boring conventions of society. It will allow the chef to make use of the latest techniques and tools in order to keep the people guessing regarding what new flavors they will encounter. For it should be known by the chef that food goes far beyond its value in the stomach. Food should be valued for its effect on the soul.

Training Of course, one must be trained in order to become a chef. However, this requirement to become a chef does not necessarily have to be filled by a culinary school. In fact, one can be trained right at home.

The Different Requirements to Become a Chef

Becoming a chef is not really easy. If you have seen the show “Jamie’s Kitchen” then you might have an idea just what it takes to become a chef. People have to go through rigorous training and testing to know whether or not they really are qualified to become chefs. The requirements to become a chef go way beyond a degree in the culinary arts. Here are some of the requirements to become a chef that you may not know about:

1) Passion and hunger passion for food and for life is what is common in all chefs. After all, food is life. Food is the most tangible expression of artistry. In all forms of art, people are made to feel the artist’s emotions. In order to make the food truly delicious, you have to cook it with passion. This is the most basic requirement to become a chef.

Hunger is also needed. You need to be always hungry for challenges. This will help you throughout the rigorous training of becoming a chef. Once you are a chef, the only thing left to do is improve. You need hunger to make sure that the more experience you have, the better your cooking skills become. Passion and hunger have to work hand in hand to make sure that you learn how to cook and you never stop learning. These two requirements to become a chef are inseparable.

2) Efficiency many people tend to overlook this requirement to become a chef. What you need to know is that a chef makes use of raw materials in order to produce something that people will be willing to pay for. These raw materials cost money. A chef has to make sure that the materials used in creating dishes are not wasted in any way. This basic requirement to become a chef will help you make sure that you will get the maximum profit from your expenses.

Efficiency also has a lot to do with time. When working in a restaurant, a chef has to deal with the impatience of people. This means that a chef needs to be able to work quickly. This requirement to become a chef is also very important since most chefs are required to multi-task. You need to be able to manage people efficiently. Chefs are often shorthanded in the kitchen. You need to be efficient to make the most of what resources you have, including help.

3) Creativity not everything goes according to plan. Because of this fact, a basic requirement to become a chef is creativity. A chef must be able to make do with what’s available to him or her. A chef has to look at something and see a hundred different ways to use it in food. Creativity is required because chefs do not merely follow recipes but create them. A common requirement to become a chef in a restaurant is the ability to plan a menu. This means that you have to be able to come up with creative ways to present food.

4) Cleanliness since you will be handling food, a basic requirement to become a chef would be cleanliness. You need to make sure that the food you prepare will not pose any health hazards to your customers. One of the requirements to become a chef would be learning about germs and how to prevent them from invading the kitchen.

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.