Culinary School Production Kitchens

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Lincoln Culinary Institute

Lincoln Culinary Institute

There’s a common saying that you “should never trust a skinny chef.” This kind of reasoning makes sense; after all, if a chef doesn’t enjoy his or her own food, why should you be tempted to even give it a try? Even more to the point, if an aspiring chef doesn’t produce food that others actually get to eat, why should any restaurant hire graduates fresh out of culinary school?

Many of the top culinary schools in the United States have jumped on board this idea by turning their classes into “production kitchens.” The concept behind production kitchens is that students in baking school or cooking school create food that goes to the school’s restaurants or even to student meals. Not only does the food get real-world taste tests in this way, but students also learn about mass production and meeting demand.

For many students, the production kitchen is actually the selling point of a particular culinary program for a variety of reasons, including:

  • The opportunity for hands-on learning with tangible results: Food that doesn’t come out well will either have to be recooked, or the “restaurant” will have to operate with a shortage.
  • Simulated kitchen experience: The stresses of working in a bakery or commercial kitchen can be fairly large. By being required to meet a minimum output, culinary students are able to learn how well they cope with large volume orders and meeting demand.
  • Discovering a niche: When you first start a culinary program, you may not know for sure what type of environment you want to work in. Working in a production kitchen will give you a better idea of how much (or how little) you like that particular type of situation.

While most culinary schools have some sort of simulated kitchen experience, not all of them boast working, income-generating production kitchens. If this is something you want to include in your culinary education, be sure to find a school that offers it as a routine part of every student’s program.

Should You Go to Culinary School to Become a Food Critic?

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food criticIf there’s one career that seems more glamorous and food-centered than becoming an Executive Chef, it’s becoming a food critic. Food critics seem to have the ultimate job: they go around tasting incredible dishes from incredible restaurants and provide their opinions on each one. And the more famous the food critic, the more prestige that comes with it. In fact, the top food critics are often the recipients of flattery and free stuff – all part of the package as chefs vie for attention and a few gold stars.

Unfortunately, becoming a food critic isn’t as easy as loving food and having decided opinions about it. In fact, culinary school is one of the most common places to find the food critics of tomorrow. That’s because the most important part of being a food critic is simply being able to cook. Of course, there are additional considerations, as well:

Writing and Journalism Skills: Most food critics write up their opinions in regular articles, blogs, or columns. This means being able to report and write interesting reviews, since you can’t be a successful food critic unless others are interested in reading what you have to say.

Knowledge about Food: You also have to have a familiarity with different ingredients and types of cuisines. Food critics have to be able to discern the different flavor profiles in a dish and compare it to others, using their own knowledge base to determine how innovative a new chef is. This is one place where having a culinary education comes in, since food critics with a background in cooking have more familiarity with cuisine.

A Discerning Palate: Food critics also have to be able to make realistic opinions on different dishes. If you’re the type of diner who likes just about anything, you probably won’t make a good food critic. After all, you have to be able to tell the good from the bad and the near-perfect from the perfect. A background in culinary school can go a long way in developing your palate.

Professionalism: The best food critics are also known entities in their field. They network with food editors, restaurant owners, celebrity chefs, reporters, and other culinary professionals. They know how to give a bad review without severing personal ties, and they are charismatic enough to become popular with others in the culinary profession. This takes a high level of professionalism and connections that are often made at top culinary schools around the world.

Becoming a food critic is a dream for many culinary students and gourmands all over the world. While it is a difficult profession to break into, culinary school might be a great place to start. After all, not only are you learning how to eat good food, but you’re learning how to cook it, too. That makes for a well-rounded education with plenty of opportunities in terms of a future culinary career.

How to Get in to Culinary School

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getting into culinary school

Getting into culinary school can be as simple as filling out an application or as complicated as taking exams, undergoing interviews, and proving financial feasibility. How difficult or how easy your application process will be depends on where you go to school and your personal background. While you will need to check out each culinary program before you can know for certain what steps are required, there are a few things to consider before you pay that application fee.

Competition: Highly competitive culinary schools like the Institute of Culinary Education and Culinary Institute of America are going to be more difficult to get into than a vocational program located in almost every state. While these more prestigious programs may not require you to have a perfect high school grade point average or ten years of experience in the food industry, you may have to demonstrate your commitment to your culinary education through other types of experiences, including internships, volunteering efforts, seminars, and other related activities.

Academics: If you intend to get an Associate, Bachelor’s, or even Master’s degree in your chosen field of culinary study, you will need to submit documents like high school transcripts, letters of reference, and detailed applications (often with essays), and you may even need to take an admissions test. These are usually the same requirements that come with any type of education at a community college or public or private university.

Costs: The costs of culinary school can be high, and most schools want to make sure you know the ins and outs of your payment plan before you are admitted to the program. This means that in addition to paying around $50 for an application fee, you may need to sit down with one of the school’s financial advisors to map out what type of funding you’ll be receiving and how you will pay it back over the next five, ten, or even twenty years.

Getting into culinary school can be one of the most exciting times of your career. Although not getting into your desired program can be disappointing, remember that the culinary world is competitive after you graduate as well as before. You have to work hard and keep on trying in order to be a real success.

Culinary School: What to Expect the First Month

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culinary schoolGoing to culinary school is an exciting first step in building yourself a career in the food service and hospitality industry. It doesn’t matter whether you’re traveling to New York to attend the Institute of Culinary Education, seeking out your nearest Le Cordon Bleu facility, or looking at the baking programs offered from your local community college: formal training and education can be one of the best ways to build skills and make contacts in the field.

You can also expect the same basic training during the first few weeks at your culinary school. Although there certainly are variations in what you will be learning as far as specifics go (for example, there will be differences in your curriculum if you will be learning classical French techniques vs. baking), most schools understand that new students are approaching a culinary career from a blank canvas.

Knife Skills
Having good knife skills is important no matter what type of cooking you’ll be doing, since it will give you speed and accuracy in your culinary endeavors. Most schools will begin with knife skills and training in the different types of knives and what they are used for.

Ingredient Familiarity
One of the differences between a cook who goes to culinary school and one who does not is being exposed to new and unique ingredients. You will learn the differences between flavor profiles and how you can use them to make unique culinary creations of your own.

Kitchen Technology
Of course, you’ll need to be familiar with a commercial or restaurant kitchen set-up before you can actually do anything with all those ingredients. Almost all schools will give students time to familiarize themselves with the different types of ovens and appliances they will be expected to use and master.

Kitchen and Food Safety
This is one subject matter that every good culinary educational facility will provide intensive training in. Until you know how to store foods, care for kitchen equipment, and work with sanitation protocols, you are a hazard in the kitchen. That’s why this is often one of the first things you’ll learn.

In most cases, it takes about a month of preparatory training in these subjects before culinary students really begin to delve in the subject matter of their choosing. It’s important to remember, though, that until these basic foundations are built, you can’t really begin to become the best possible chef you can be.

Does TV Glorify the Culinary Career?

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on December 11, 2009
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celebrity chef

There’s no question that culinary schools are seeing a surge in interest in recent years. More students are applying for and getting into the culinary programs of their choice than ever before, and new schools and facilities are opening every month. However, this increase in students also means an increase in graduates.

While the food service industry continues to grow at a faster-than-national-average rate, the percentage of positions at the top – the Executive Chefs, the restaurant owners, and the celebrity chefs – remain fairly static. This means that although you might have dreams of your culinary education leading directly to fame and fortune, success in this field may not be as easy as it first appears.

Part of the recent surge in interest in a culinary education is the number of smaller fine-dining venues being celebrated around the country. Large chain restaurants will always be popular, but diners in every city are discovering more diverse palates and looking for ways to eat well on their current budgets. The culprit for this interest? Television.

Celebrity chefs like Rachel Ray, Emeril Lagasse, Anthony Bourdain, and Tom Colicchio have turned fine dining into something that even Middle America can enjoy. Their television shows introduce new ingredients and new cooking techniques to a wide audience of viewers. The result is that more and more people are clamoring for some of that good cooking.

While this is good news for culinary students interested in entering the field, it’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking that a culinary career is as glamorous or as easy as these celebrity chefs make it seem. Almost all television chefs have entire teams behind them, preparing food, adjusting recipes, and doing the cleanup work; their actual time spent in the kitchen is not always that high.

They may spend hours each day marketing, promoting, getting makeup put on, and meeting with producers. And while these types of activities can make for a good career, it may not be what put you on track to a culinary education in the first place.

There are also considerations of entry-level work to consider, as well. All the TV chefs are at the middle or ends of their careers. They may have spent years working the line, working 10 hour days, or even watching their own first restaurants fail. Most culinary students can expect to lay plenty of groundwork before the real benefits of a culinary career start to hit.

While you should never let these types of obstacles stop you from pursuing the culinary career of your dreams, it’s important to embark on your studies with open eyes. You can achieve success after culinary school. You just have to work hard to get there.

Male and Female Ratios in Culinary School

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culinary school studentsUntil very recently, the proportion of men to women in culinary schools (and in the restaurant industry as a whole) has been very uneven. Just twenty-five years ago, the percentage of women attending culinary school hovered somewhere below 10 percent. Fifteen years ago, that number jumped to around 35 percent. Today, women and men attend culinary school in almost equal proportions.

Of course, these numbers aren’t static across the board. When you look at the more prestigious schools (like the Culinary Institute of America), male students still outrank female ones 7 to 3. These numbers are a little more evenly distributed than they have been in the past, but female students can certainly feel outnumbered.

Interestingly enough, women always have outranked men when it comes to baking school. In fact, even the CIA sees a disproportionate number of female baking and pastry arts students; in 2003, women accounted for almost 80 percent of the students.

So, what do all of these numbers mean? The answer can be found by looking directly at the restaurant industry.

Although women and men are now attending culinary school in equal proportions, the number of male culinary professionals continues to be higher. Everyone from the celebrity chefs on Food Network and the winners on Top Chef to the Executive Chefs and restaurant owners currently in operation fall into the male majority. That’s because it’s going to take a few years before the cooking school numbers are reflected in the workforce. Women are just now starting to graduate and move beyond entry-level jobs to start finding their niches in the culinary industry.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or a woman considering culinary school; these days, the options are fairly gender-neutral. Women may have a few more hurdles to face in proving their physical stamina in the kitchen, but they should have no problems when it comes to the school admissions process. Culinary schools know that they have decades of inequality to make up for, so more women are finding easy entry than ever before.

Skills Needed to Succeed in Baking School

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on November 10, 2009
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baking schoolAlthough the two fall under the same umbrella concept of working in the kitchen, baking school and cooking school are two very different ideas. Cooking is very much an art form, requiring students to use their imaginations and their taste buds to come up with new, delicious creations. Baking is more like a science, and although there is certainly room for creativity, there is much about baking that has to do with measurements and proportions of ingredients.

Most of the time, culinary professionals focus on either baking or cooking, although they may dabble a little in both. If you think baking school might be right for you, consider the following skills sets:

  • Attention to detail: Because so much of baking school is about creating correct proportions of things like leavening agents, you have to be able to understand how the little things might make all the difference.
  • Adaptable and imaginative: At the same time, while you have to be able to adhere to time-honored techniques and recipes, you have to be able to come up with recipes of your own. That means taking the skills you learn and applying them to your own creations.
  • Physically capable: Much of baking is strenuous. You can expect to work in a hot, fast-paced environment, oftentimes for long hours at a time. In many types of settings, you’ll also need to lift heavy trays and/or cakes.
  • Team-oriented: When you go to baking school or even start a baking career, you’re not going to be going solo. You need to work well with others in both a leadership and a team setting, since commercial kitchens and bakeries often require collaboration from the start of a project to the finish.

Of course, you’ll also need basic kitchen skills. Fortunately all of these things can be learned as you go through baking skill. Some people are born with the type of patience and attention it takes to become a successful pastry chef; others have to develop these things over time. As long as you choose a good pastry arts and baking school, however, you’ve taken the right first step.

Culinary Degree or Hospitality Management Degree

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on October 20, 2009
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What is the Difference between a Culinary Arts Degree and a Hospitality Management Degree?

hospitality management schoolHospitality management is one of the hottest fields in the culinary community right now. Not only does it tie into the food aspect of the food and restaurant industry, but it also includes a strong sense of business and general management. For some culinary students, this represents the perfect combination: creative license when it comes to issues of food, and a little more structure when it comes to career logistics.

What Exactly is Hospitality Management?

Hospitality management is basically the business side of running a restaurant, hotel, or other facility. Much of the work relates to things like:

•    Menu development
•    Human resources/hiring
•    Managing employees
•    Ordering and keeping a kitchen stocked
•    Customer service
•    Keeping a facility up to code

However, depending on whether you work in a restaurant, catering facility, cruise ship, hotel, or other facility, your required skills will vary. For example, you may have to jump on the line to help with a peak period one day and spend the next sitting at your desk helping to prepare tax documents.

How Hospitality Management Degrees are Structured

Because so much of hospitality management is about business, it is often taken as an Associate, Bachelor, or even Master’s Degree course. There are shorter education options, but individuals with a higher education degree are more likely to find a job in middle management or get promotions once your career is underway. You can also switch to other fields with greater ease, should you discover that the culinary field is not for you.

Remember, though, that much of hospitality management is about people and numbers. If you want to go to culinary school to focus on food, you might be better off pursing a culinary degree.

How to Tell Your Parents You Want to Go to Culinary School

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culinary school discussionDeciding which culinary school you want to attend is a step in the right direction for your culinary career. From the options in Le Cordon Bleu schools, community college programs, local vocational centers, and even the prestigious Institute of Culinary Education, simply finding and being accepted into a program is a pretty big deal. However, there is one step that many students fail to consider when choosing a culinary program: telling your parents where you’re going and how much it’s going to cost.

Overall, culinary schools have a pretty negative reputation for being expensive and too focused. After all, if you attend a traditional four-year college, you explore more than just one field of study, and you  end up with a Bachelor’s degree to help you land a job.

After culinary school, there’s pretty much one thing you can do with your degree or certificate: go to work in a kitchen. This is just the sort of thing that makes parents nervous, since it limits your options and might negate those two to four years of hard work.

However, there are benefits to culinary school that even parents can support. You simply have to angle them correctly.

“I’m doing more than getting an education; I’m learning a skill.” General education courses teach a lot of the same things you learn in high school: math, English, science, and the like. When you attend culinary school, you’re going beyond simple learning to include real vocational-centered training.

“The restaurant industry is one of the fastest-growing in the United States.” Jobs in the restaurant industry are expected to increase at a higher-than-average national rate. This means that more opportunities are arising daily, and there is plenty of room for advancement.

“I won’t be spending forever at school.” One of the benefits of culinary school is that you can complete your training in as little as nine months. This means that you’ll be on your way to a job before other students have even finished their second semester.

“Most of the schools take the same kind of financial aid taken at four-year universities.” If you look for a program that falls under the FAFSA program, you may be eligible for the same loans, grants, and work-study opportunities that traditional college students get.

Remember, only you can really decide the path of your future. If you feel that culinary school is right for you, there are few careers that offer the same kind of job satisfaction as the food and restaurant industry. You may have to work harder, but in the end, you’ll be that much more satisfied with your career – and your life.

Salaries in the Culinary Industry

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on September 22, 2009
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Money seems to be one of those topics that all culinary students want to know more about. How much does culinary school really cost? How much can I expect to make after culinary school graduation? Exactly how much money does Rachel Ray bring in every year?culinary school costs

These kids of questions are valid ones; after all, becoming a chef is a life-long dream for many people, and it’s important to know exactly what to expect in pursuing that dream. Although salaries in the culinary industry vary depending on where you live (for example, a job in New York is going to pay more than a job in Iowa, simply by virtue of cost-of-living) and what type of restaurant you’re in, there are a few averages that can help you in making a decision.

  • At one end of the spectrum are the line cooks and sous chefs, who make among the lowest incomes in the culinary industry. Entry-level positions begin at $18,000 a year and work up to $28,000, depending on whether or not you have a degree and/or experience in the kitchen.
  • Baking schools tend to be less popular than culinary schools, and the starting wages in this field reflect that. That’s because those who do the hiring (commercial baking kitchens and bakeries) don’t always have as many opportunities for career growth. Graduates can expect to make between $16,000 and $26,000 to start.
  • The field of hospitality management typically offers a higher starting wage, though it often requires an Associate or Bachelor’s degree prior to hire. Most professionals can expect to make between $25,000 and $45,000 for working either directly with the food or in a more general manager’s role. Career advancement in hospitality management tends to be higher than what you can find in a more traditional culinary role, with top hotel managers exceeding the $80,000 mark.
  • At the higher end of the spectrum are the Chefs and Pastry Chefs, who can pull anywhere from $30,000 to upwards of $60,000 per year, depending on how successful they are and where they work. For those interested in opening their own restaurants, the pay can range anywhere from a modest $40,000 to over $100,000 per year, though the amount of hours worked a day (at least in the beginning) can be grueling.

Of course, there are exceptions to any and all of these rules – and there are other benefits to take into consideration, as well. Many culinary professionals find that the creative license given at a smaller restaurant makes the lower pay acceptable, while others find the weekend and evening hours at a hotel are a great trade-off for a higher income.