Culinary Arts Career – What are Your Options?

The field of culinary arts is without a doubt a fast-growing industry.  It has always been popular; but with today’s “celebrity” culture, people are more aware of the existence of chefs.  As a result, more and more people are pursuing a career in this industry.  They are seeing this field as a feasible one.  More and more colleges and universities are offering degrees and training programs to people who are interested in pursuing a culinary arts career.

Choosing Your Path

A career in the culinary field comes in many forms.  There are many areas to choose from.  One can always choose from among its many fields depending on his or her interest.   Perhaps, you are interested with cooking haute cuisine.  Perhaps, you like baking and you dream of becoming a pastry chef.  The possibilities are positively endless.  Every field offers its own challenges.  You need to take your time to consider what culinary arts career path you would like to pursue.  Make sure that you end up with a choice that would suit and fulfill you for a long time to come.

Choosing from Among the Different Areas

There are actually four areas that you can choose from.  First, you can choose to work at any restaurant and take on a restaurant-related position.  Usually, this type of culinary arts career involves food service.  You will often find people working in this particular field.  Restaurant positions vary depending on the needs of a particular restaurant.  A big establishment would require several employees while a smaller establishment would need a smaller number of employees.  There are operations with multiple outlets.  You will likely find corporate jobs in these businesses.  Accordingly, your interest may vary.  You could end up working as a chef.  Perhaps, you would qualify as a manager.

You can also pursue a culinary arts career in hotels and restaurants.  This industry is growing fast, and careers in this industry are also growing in number and variety.  This is the reason why more and more people are joining this industry.  The numbers of jobs are growing in this field.

If you don’t want to work in a restaurant, hotel or resort, you can always choose to work as a personal chef.  There are a lot of people who are working for a number of clients only, cooking for them and preparing their meals daily.  There are many people who are securing the service of a personal chef.  You can always choose to work privately.  This can be a feasible culinary arts career for you as well.

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Chef Training – Pursuing a Career in the Culinary Arts

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Cooking comes easy to some people, but this poses a challenge to many.  There are some people who have the natural knack for cooking.  To them, cooking comes easily.  These are the lucky ones who have the natural flair for tastes and flavors.  Fact is cooking is not that complicated.  With the right education and chef training, one can develop all the culinary skills that he needs in order to become a very good chef.

Hence, a good chef training and education are necessary before one can work as a chef.  People who have the same are often regarded as culinary kings.  Chefs are given the highest regard when it comes to cooking.  Their skills are often unquestioned.  Of course, reaching this height is not easy.  Before one can be acclaimed as a chef, he or she needs to undergo rigid and tough chef training.  There are a lot of skills that one needs to learn and perfect before he or she can be known as a true chef.

Qualifying as a Chef

You don’t actually have to be a high school graduate just to get into a good culinary school.  There are chef training programs that you can apply for even without a high school diploma.  Of course, being a high school graduate has its perks when it comes to learning.  After all, mathematics can come into the picture when cooking.  Managing a restaurant or a kitchen also requires knowledge of basic things that you can learn in high school.  Still, if you don’t have one, you don’t have to sweat it.  There are programs that are offered by hotels and restaurants.

Advancing as a Chef through Training

You will likely start out as a prep cook.  This is if you are working in a huge restaurant which requires several chefs working in the kitchen.  You could start out as a short order cook.  However, you can move up the next level if you will devote yourself to vigorous chef training.  You will have to develop your skills and hone your techniques.

When you undergo chef training, you will be enrolled in an apprenticeship program.  If you are lucky, you can be an apprentice to any of the world’s best chefs.  This will surely help your career later on.  You will likely be hired by the same company.  In truth, this is the most common path pursued by many of the world renowned chefs today.  Perhaps, it’s the same path that you can pursue.

What Makes Up the Best Chef Blogs Online?

With so many blogs and websites online, it is definitely hard to look for the best chef blogs.  If you are in the field of culinary arts, you may be looking for blogs that are definitely worth your time.  Of course, you don’t have to be a chef to look for a good culinary blog.  Perhaps, you just love cooking and you are looking for a website that offers good reading.  Perhaps, you are looking for blogs that will inspire you to make your own.

What Constitutes a Good Read?

What makes up a good chef blog?  Basically, a good site offers information.  That is vital.  A website should offer a lot of information.  You should be able to learn from it.  Aside from that, it should also be inspirational.  It should be able to make you want to do something or achieve something.  It should make you want to cook a delicious dish, go on a trip or go to a culinary school.  It doesn’t matter as long as the site would inspire you to achieve something.  A good blog should be interesting.  There should be a lot of things to see or videos to watch.  It should be fun to read.  It should have its own personality.  It should leave you chuckling or grimacing.  These are the characteristics that are common among the best chef blogs.

Creating Your Own Chef Blog

The best chef blogs online can inspire you to make your own blog.  If you want to get people’s attention, you need to make sure that you have a fairly engaging food website.  You need to provide information that is useful to practically everyone in the World Wide Web.  You need to push boundaries with your ideas, and you should be able to inspire people.  If you are chef, this is fairly easy.  You just have to stretch your food biases and experiment with what-ifs.

The best chef blogs are honest and witty.  These blogging chefs have the knack for playing with words.  They often speak right to the heart of a reader.  It is easier to write for your blog if you can speak with your heart.  After all, this is the same thing you use when you cook.

Pictures!  You need to have a lot of pictures.  You can’t leave your readers hanging with just words.  You need to show them a lot of pictures.  If a particular dish is mouthwatering, make sure that your readers know exactly how mouthwatering it is by showing them a sumptuous picture of the dish.  The best chef blogs often have engaging photos.

These are just some of the things that you can do if you want to create your own website.  Visiting the best chef blogs online will certainly give you a lot of idea.

Pursuing a Culinary Arts Career

Culinary arts have always been associated with cooking.  Perhaps, like everyone else, you often conjure an image of a chef with a huge hat when you hear the term “culinary”.  This is inevitable with more and more people pursuing a culinary arts degree just so they can become professional chefs one day.  Fortunately, there are many schools and universities today that offer culinary arts career courses, so there is no reason why you won’t be able to pursue a degree and have a shot at becoming a chef.  Of course, there are different kinds of chefs working in various fields.  Your choice will ultimately depend on your preferences.

Chefs have always been around for a number of years.  They have been cooking in restaurants, hotels, resorts and private homes for years and years.  Contrary to the general perception, however, it is not easy to become a professional chef.  The whole process can be relatively demanding and exhausting.   You will have to be on your feet for hours.  You will be working graveyard shifts.  You will work on weekends and during the holidays.  Even if you end up as the head chef, you will have to work the same hours as your staff – perhaps, even longer.  You will have more responsibilities.  Of course, you don’t automatically become the head chef.  You will have to start at the bottom of the culinary ladder.  After all, there are different kinds of chefs.  You will have to spend a lot of time training and honing your craft before you can hit the higher rungs. 

There is more to becoming a chef than pursuing a degree.  To reach the top of the ladder, one needs to work hard.  If you are interested in pursuing a culinary arts career, you need to know what you are in for.  After completing a degree, you will likely find yourself working as an apprentice.  This is a very good thing if you want to learn more about the craft.  You will have to start out later as a prep chef, peeling onions and chopping tomatoes.

Once you have proven yourself, you will likely be promoted as line chef.  Of course, the rungs do not end there.  You need to continuously prove yourself in order to go up the ladder.  Perhaps, you will eventually become a sous chef or the executive chef.  If you work hard enough, you may soon find yourself holding the head chef or executive chef position in a very good restaurant.  Again, there are many kinds of chefs.  But to pursue a culinary arts career, you need a lot of hard work and determination.