Culinary Institutes Do Not Necessarily Create Chefs
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios


Defined Tag: Culinary Institutes.

If you desire to be a chef and attend culinary institutes, there are those who might want to discourage you. There are chefs from culinary institutes and restaurants who question, caution, and even discourage people from trying to become a chef. These current professionals view aspiring chefs as being frustrated cubicle-dwellers who watched the Food Network and think being a chef is a walk in the park. They perceive meal preparation as being easier than microwaving popcorn and may even have stars in their eyes at the prospect of being the next Emeril. All it takes, they think, is a jaunt in the culinary institutes.

The chefs of the culinary institutes don't take offense to the dreams of the chefs-to-be. They probably ruffle more at the amateur's lack of respect or appreciation for the difficulty of climbing up the culinary ladder. Even for those who don't want to chase the bright television lights, they might perceive cooking professionally in a restaurant as no different as cooking in their home kitchen. The life of a chef may not be as glamorous as it seems, at least at first. Working fifty or more hours per week is not unusual. Also expect to work during nights, weekends, and holidays, all for relatively little pay and in a highly stressful environment.

With all that in mind, is cooking school the right path? Not necessarily, although it can help. Ultimately, experience is key. Education coupled with experience is better. The professional chef, however, dislikes hot-shot amateur chefs who think they know everything straight out of cooking school. There is no substitute for experience. Learning how to cook a meal and preparing it a couple of times during class is not the same as preparing that same meal hundreds of times in a fast-paced and pressure-packed environment. While preparing a dish requires a great deal of thought, part of becoming a chef is acquiring many different physical skills that can only be refined by hundreds of repetitions.

Once out of school, don't expect to be preparing chateaubriand for a paying crowd. You'll be doing your fair share of salad prep, scaling fish, and gutting lobsters. If you still think that being a professional chef is what you want to do after months of this kind of work, you'll be ahead of the game.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.