Culinary Arts: Unleash your Passion for Food!
Do you like watching cooking shows in your spare time? Are you passionate about food? Is cooking your favourite past-time? Then working within the culinary arts industry should be your ultimate goal.
What’s this career about?
The field of culinary arts basically deals with the science and art of cooking. The job of a culinary arts professional is to balance the aesthetics with the nutrition — basically to make food look good so that it appeals to our senses, and to also ensure that its food value is not compromised. S\he has the skill to create fusions between different types of cuisines or to be creative and even come up with a unique dish.
A culinarian working in restaurants is commonly known as a chef. A chef is an artist. In a restaurant setting, the Executive or Head Chef is in charge of the kitchen; their duties include kitchen staff training and oversight, food ordering and menu planning, and supervision of meal preparation. The Sous Chef is next in command. They also have supervisory roles in the kitchen, but they typically play larger roles in daily food preparation than chefs.
Apart from the Head Chef, you can also become a Personal Chef, Pastry Chef, Baker, Catering Specialist or Dessert Specialist. Depending on the chef job you are taking on, you could be working before dawn or not even starting your shift until the evening.
Research Chefs create recipes based on consumer feedback, modify existing recipes or even creating new recipes through experimentation. Their duties include testing new products for flavour and nutritional content, monitoring ingredients for quality and nutrition or finding substitutes for additives that could be unhealthy or harmful.
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Dr Vibha Gupta, a feature writer, is a Ph.D. in Mathematics from IIT Roorkee. Her book Careers: A Pathfinder and articles in various publications are an attempt to guide students in choosing a career according to their natural strengths, talents and skills.