Hot topics for both consumers and webmarketers on WebmasterRadio.FM
Every Wednesday, 5PM Eastern.
Culinary Schools Tips
Choosing Culinary Classes
The one thing you will need to know when choosing your culinary classes is how long you want to study. If you're looking to study for one year or less you may consider choosing culinary classes that will provide you with a certificate -- culinary certificates normally require up to one year of study. If you have two years to spare you may choose to obtain an associate's degree -- this usually requires two years of study. If you are serious about a full time career in the culinary arts, you'll consider enrolling an accredited culinary institution or cooking school.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
What to Look for in a Culinary School
The best culinary schools are the ones that offer a wide variety of student services and cutting edge curriculum. All of your time shouldn’t be spent in the classroom listening to lectures, although lecture time is an important component. Cooking schools should focus the majority of their curriculum on cooking. Practical, hands-on experience is what it takes to turn an apprentice cook into a professional chef.
Being exposed to a world of diverse and ethnic cuisine helps to round out the student learning experience as well. Students should be given every opportunity to pursue voluntary internships at a few different places, and to hit the ground running as soon as possible. Culinary schools like The French Culinary Institute offer a quick, intense program designed to give students all of these opportunities and more. They go quickly from the classroom to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the on-campus restaurant L’Ecole.
The French Culinary Institute attracts a diverse group of students from international locations. Just working side-by-side with students of different cultural backgrounds is a great learning experience. Add to that the culinary opportunities that exist in New York City (where the Institute is located) and the sky’s the limit. It probably goes without saying that students of culinary schools in New York City have distinct advantages. Besides the fashion and social scene, culinary ranks right up there among the best.
So, when students are in search of the best culinary school, they should look for schools that offer a well-rounded and hands-on approach to learning.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary School Options
Before you start culinary school, consider your options. There are one-year culinary school diploma courses that will enable you to work in many restaurants. With a two year associate degree you can go into restaurant, hotel management or become a baker or pastry chef. A four-year degree will allow you many more options. The higher your qualifications the more likely you are to get a position with better pay. Another option is to take a one or two-year course and find out by working in the industry what it is you want to do. Some restaurants have apprentice programs.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Defining Culinary Success
As we move into a much more enlightened age, it’s important to recognize that success isn’t defined solely by dollar figures or material goods. How you define success might be completely different from another point of view. Graduates of culinary schools, for example, might define success as having opened a new bakery, taken over the management of a restaurant, or established their own unique pastry creation.
If you’re considering attending one of the best culinary schools, it’s important to have a clear idea of your goals before you even set foot in the door. Define your success before you get started. That way, as you move through the curriculum, you’ll know where you want to go, what you want to do, and what steps you’ll need to take to get there. If your goals change part-way through the curriculum, don’t worry! The point is to build your foundation for success by keeping goals in sight.
The next thing to do is to evaluate how reasonable your goals are. It’s not negative or weak to take a step back and say, hey! maybe my goals are out of reach at this particular time. That doesn’t mean letting go of your dreams, it just opens up your mind space to be able to accept that your goals might take time to achieve. In the meantime, be open to every new culinary experience that comes along. Keep your options open!
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary Classes for Restaurant Management
Some of the culinary classes you need to consider for a career in restaurant management are: food and beverage control, food and beverage service, hospitality supervision, hospitality computer systems, basic financial accounting, facilities management, hospitality sales and marketing, hospitality law, budgeting for hospitality and general psychology.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary Clubs – No Secret Password Required
The best culinary school you can attend is the one that offers a wide range of extra-curricular activities. These activities should be designed to promote student success. They should bond students while introducing them to new ideas and concepts related to their field of study.
The French Culinary Institute is one of these schools. Students have the option of joining any number of clubs including the following:
The Forager Club: This club makes a point of going out on the hunt for great food choices in NYC. From edible wild growing plants to organic greens, The Forager Club doesn’t discriminate. They travel far and wide, including farm tours in New York State .
The Wine Club: Who wouldn’t want to join The Wine Club? Members benefit from guest lecturers and visiting sommeliers. Imagine being able to write “wine tasting” on your resume as a marketable skill. This club really gets the inside scoop on what it means to pair food and wine which is extremely helpful in the culinary industry.
The Supper Club: With this club, students have an opportunity to visit top restaurants, many run by alumni of The French Culinary Institute. Through this club, students really get an insider’s view behind the scenes of restaurant management.
The International Club: Students who attend the French Culinary Institute come from all over the world. This unique club gives those students a chance to connect while sharing their diverse cultures and backgrounds.
Professors of the French Culinary Institute understand that learning is much more than just what you find in a textbook. Students are encouraged to round out their days by viewing sporting events, having a look at the fashion scene, seeing a Broadway show, shopping, and (of course) visiting Little Italy, Chinatown , art galleries, museums.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Kitchen Management and Culinary Schools
Chef schools often teach kitchen management classes. Cooking classes in NYC offer insights in how to manage a kitchen properly and proper operating procedures. Cooking classes in NYC offering kitchen management courses take into account that kitchens can be very busy, especially in a popular restaurant. Chef schools teach not only how to prepare food properly, but how to do so quickly, under pressure of a clock. People in a restaurant do not want to wait two hours for their food. Proper kitchen management helps prepare and cook the food quickly. With so much happening in the kitchen, effective kitchen management is important for restaurant employees and customers.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary Arts: Food Storage Tips
A course in classic culinary arts will introduce you to food storage. You can get a step ahead of the classic culinary arts course with these tips on food storage.
• Don't store potatoes and onions under the sink. Pipes can leak onto the potatoes and onions, and this will damage and ruin the food.
• Do not use or purchase canned goods that are sticky on the outside. This is a sign of a leak.
• When storing food in the refrigerator, the temperature of the refrigerator should be 36 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Use older products before opening newer products.
• Using a permanent marker, write the date of the contents you store -- after three days the contents should be thrown out.
• Food should not sit out longer than two hours.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Differences in Degrees in Culinary Classes
A culinary institute offers a degree, a diploma or a certificate depending on what you want. The culinary institute programs for each could last from as little as two months to as long as four years.
Culinary schools offer only diplomas and certificates. Culinary classes usually offer only a certificate of completion.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Best-Rated Culinary Schools
Some of the best culinary schools around the world are right in the United States, particularly in New York and in other major cities. In most cases, you can even study foreign cuisines in the best culinary schools and classes.
Top culinary schools do cost a bit more than schools that might be new or provide courses other than cooking. The top culinary schools do, however, provide excellent training and to be able to say you attended one of these schools is a great thing to put on your resume.
Not all of the culinary schools are the same, the tops ones themselves differ in the sort of classes they provide. While one school may offer French and Italian cuisine courses, another may be specific to Mexican or Japanese cuisines courses. Some of the top culinary schools are specific to baking or desserts cooking courses only. Be sure not to only consider the cost of cooking courses but which school appeals to you more with class structure and availability.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
New York Cooking School
If you are considering a career in the culinary arts, you might want to try a New York cooking school. While there are a number of other schools out there, a New York cooking school may provide more of an opportunity to work with some of the best restaurants in the world while attending a culinary arts institute. The trick is, if you wanted to study the culinary arts in both French and Italian cuisines, if you went to a cooking school in France, you may only learn the French cuisine and would have to pay for additional classes for any other lessons. If you went to a New York cooking school, you may be better off as you could easily learn techniques to apply to any cuisine at the same school. This depends, of course, on which cooking school you opt to go to in New York but with so many schools, you should have no problems finding the right one for you for learning about the culinary arts.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Compliments to the Chef
Are you known in your family as the one who “knows how to cook”? It’s a great feeling to sit down with family and friends, serve a full meal and enjoy the compliments that follow. It’s great to feel valued for your strengths and accomplishments. The next time you’re in a restaurant and you’ve devoured what you think might be the best meal of your life, make sure to compliment the chef.
The wait staff should be tipped, as is customary. But people sometimes forget about the person who actually created the menu, carefully chose the ingredients, and oversaw the entire process from start to finish. The question is, how do you actually compliment the chef? You could leave an extra tip for the chef, but that can come across as tacky in a high end restaurant. If you’ve haven’t met the chef, asked your waiter or waitress (or the hostess) to introduce you. Yes, he or she is probably very busy, but they’ve always got time to accept a fine compliment from a customer.
On the other hand, if you’ve met the chef before, you could pop your head in the kitchen and give him or her the thumbs-up, or indirectly thank the chef by referring all of your friends and family to the restaurant.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary School Residence
When looking for culinary schools, it’s important to consider residence. Assuming you’ll have to relocate (at least temporarily) while attending culinary arts school, you’re going to want to stay somewhere in relative proximity. Walking distance is great. On site residence is ideal. Culinary schools like The French Culinary Institute offer affordable apartments near the campus. The location is central to museums, retail stores, theatre, art, and – of course – the finest restaurants in New York City .
Some people choose to commute to culinary school; however, it’s important to remember that a lot of important study time, and time you could be networking and learning about your trade, will be swallowed up in travel time. Sure you can study on a bus or subway, but you’ll still be spending the majority of your after-hours time in transit. By living in residence, or in a nearby apartment, you’ll benefit from being able to take part in extra-curricular activities. For example, The French Culinary Institute offers students a number of clubs they can join as a way to get them out and about, learning about food, wine, breads, and more.
The more time you can spend with your peers, on or near campus, the more you’re going to get out of your culinary education.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary School Options
Before you start culinary school, consider your options. There are one-year culinary school diploma courses that will enable you to work in many restaurants. With a two year associate degree you can go into restaurant, hotel management or become a baker or pastry chef. A four-year degree will allow you many more options. The higher your qualifications the more likely you are to get a position with better pay. Another option is to take a one or two-year course and find out by working in the industry what it is you want to do. Some restaurants have apprentice programs.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary School Options
Before you start culinary school, consider your options. There are one-year culinary school diploma courses that will enable you to work in many restaurants. With a two year associate degree you can go into restaurant, hotel management or become a baker or pastry chef. A four-year degree will allow you many more options. The higher your qualifications the more likely you are to get a position with better pay. Another option is to take a one or two-year course and find out by working in the industry what it is you want to do. Some restaurants have apprentice programs.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Top Culinary School Tuition
Tuition for culinary school varies. The tuition for top culinary schools in New York compared to a small town in Nebraska may be drastically different. The matter may be in the phrase, "you get what you pay for." Some potential employers may be more impressed with the name of the school you go to. It may be worth a higher tuition for culinary school. You may be getting the same education with either school you attended. Tuition for a culinary school in New York, for example, may run just shy of $40,000 for a full year of training. This is no more expensive than a year in any state college. If even this price is a little uncomfortable for you still, you may consider apply for a culinary scholarship. The America Academy of Chefs, the Culinary Trust and the Chef2Chef Scholarships fund all offer culinary scholarships to help pay for tuition for culinary school.
Save Tip
Comments
Tip Rating
Culinary Institute
When choosing a culinary institute it's always a good idea to choose a culinary institute that offers career placement. You can search online for culinary institutes, and browse through their Web site to see if they offer career placement/planning. If you can't find the information on the Web, you can request that the school mail it to you by filling out a form on their Web site or calling for more information.
