Have you wondered what was included in a Culinary Arts program and how a Culinary Arts degree might relate to actual work in a professional kitchen or hospitality setting? Let’s outline what you can learn and explore some of the career benefits of earning a Culinary Arts certificate or degree.
Careers in the Culinary Arts
In the Laney College Culinary Arts programs, you gain more than skills. With professional training and insights, you’ll earn the confidence to start and excel in a rewarding career. Many hospitality careers and kitchen roles are considered essential. So, regardless of global situations, you’re looking at a lifetime of continued employment. Culinary Arts skills are also highly portable. You can take these skills with you wherever your life may take you.
Culinary Math and Science
Fundamentals of culinary math are essential for a career in restaurants and hospitality. You’ll learn the fundamentals at Laney Culinary. If your academic or study skills need a little work you’ll find tutors, learning labs, and additional support through the college, in Math, English and even Spanish.
Have you ever wondered what goes into a restaurant meal or how a particular dish was prepared? The Laney Culinary programs provide you insights and first-hand experience with fresh ingredients and commercial restaurant equipment.
By understanding formulas and food costs, you can make your own recipes. This is how to truly make a name for yourself in the restaurant industry. If you love experimenting with food, then learning about recipes, formulas, and food costs might be for you.
You could start your culinary career in the dish room. But, you can accelerate your career in a safe and supportive professional kitchen, under the guidance of trained professionals, in the Laney College Culinary Arts department.
Learn How to Really Cook
Stocks, soups and sauces are, in a traditional brigade kitchen, the job of the saucier or “sauce chef.” But, every skilled commis or junior chef should have some knowledge of stocks, soups, and sauces. It’s been said that a quality stock is the secret to exquisite soups or sauces. This is often a key to a restaurant’s success or failure.
It’s also really helpful that you learn the language and hierarchy of the brigade kitchen, the standard organization for fine dining establishments all over the world.
Convection, conduction, or radiation, oh my! Learn all about how, why, and when to apply heat to food so you can cook every dish to perfection. From simmering and sautéing to grilling, roasting, poaching or broiling, you’ll learn to make food sizzle with the Principles of Heat Cooking course. Now you’re cooking with gas, or electricity!
Learn how to cook at scale, for large groups and in real restaurant and commercial kitchen setting with Cuisine Fundamentals Labs. This is a critical and highly portable skill for a restaurateur, chef, or restaurant manager. Find your formulas, understand your food costs, and make your recipes for large groups. There you have it, a restaurant in the making!
An introduction to garde manger and food presentation can give you a competitive advantage in a traditional brigade or scratch kitchen.
Fine Dining and Brigade Kitchen Skills
An introduction to garde manger and food presentation can give you a competitive advantage in a traditional brigade or scratch kitchen. The garde manger, sometimes called the pantry chef, primarily handles the cold or chilled foods in a restaurant kitchen. These include salads, hors d’oeuvres, cheeses and charcuterie meats. These skills will well prepare you for the competitive world of fine-dining.
Contemporary American Bistro Cooking
American bistro cooking techniques incorporate flavors, styles, and ingredients from the cultures that have influenced American life for the last few hundred years. New American Cuisine or American Bistro cooking started in the 1980s. Popularized through the 1990’s, it still inspires and informs kitchens and menus today. Often featuring fresh, seasonal ingredients and sauces, it is inspired by French, Mediterranean, Latin American, Asian and other world cuisines.
Culinary Nutrition
Part science, part culinary skills development, Culinary Nutrition will develop your understanding of how the elements of nutrition impact health. From nutritional meal planning and recipe modifications to marketing good nutrition to the public, it’s about eating good and eating well. If pursuing a career as a personal chef is an aspiration, there’s no better way to prepare your client for a role in a Marvel movie than knowing something about nutrition. A Culinary Arts degree can make you a nutrition superhero yourself.
Learning Standards of Food Safety and Sanitation
You know that letter grade on the front window of a restaurant? That will make or break you in the restaurant industry. Getting an A, or whatever standard your county or state requires, requires the understanding and management of proper food sanitation. Don’t try to open your restaurant without it!
Practice and Practical Culinary Training
It’s not all brigade kitchen and line-cooking skills you develop at Laney College Culinary Arts. With the Laney Bistro, students get real-time experience preparing and presenting meals to paying patrons. In Dining Room Service and Management, you’ll learn all about standards of contemporary and classical dining service and get firsthand experience in the front of the house, from hospitality and beverage service to quick and full service operations and supervision.
Understanding, preparing, and presenting International Cuisine is the culmination of all your Culinary Arts training at Laney College. This is professional fine-dining and restaurant food services, your opportunity to flex your learned culinary skills and create the atmosphere and experience that is true hospitality.
Learn costs and sales concepts and how volume and costs relate directly to profits.
Restaurant Management Training
Running a successful food service operation requires understanding and mastery of the principles of cost controls. Learn costs and sales concepts and how volume and costs relate directly to profits. How you buy, store, and handle your food and beverages is critical to success. The skills and principles in this course will make you truly indispensable to any restaurant or hospitality operation. This is even before you set foot in a commercial kitchen.
Being a boss is one thing. Learning to be an effective supervisor or restaurant manager requires understanding of the theories and principles of human resources. You’ll also need to know something about personnel management. From hiring, compensation, and benefits to wellness, ethics and harassment concerns, the Supervision in the Hospitality Industry course teaches you how to care for your team and get the best from each employee. Pairing supervisory skills with some Spanish or English language courses at Laney College and you’ll be even better prepared to effectively manage your own brigade kitchen.
A Culinary Arts Degree for Your Career
With such affordable tuition and the options for grants, financial aid, and scholarships, if you’re keen on becoming a professional chef, a Culinary Arts Degree or Certificate of Achievement is definitely worth it. You can either spend two years sweating in a dish room before you set foot on a kitchen line. Or, you can explore your passion, gain experience, learn the language and traditions- now. The necessary insights for a culinary career, learned in an environment with seasoned culinary professionals, will afford you stability, advancement, and a large measure of joy. Learn more about tuition, costs, and financial aid for your culinary education at Laney.edu.