6 Things you will learn at Culinary School

Culinary School is a place where you will learn the very secrets of cooking. Not only this helps you to create a brand image of yours in the industry but it also helps you win people’s hearts at your home. You will learn the best knife skills, preparation skills, tasting, and presentation of the food to people. 

At the best culinary schools in India, you will find life-long lessons too which will help you to create your own working style. This blog is about 6 wonderful things that you will learn at a Culinary School. 

Mise En Place- Preparation for the meal:

As culinary students, the first thing you will learn at school is the right preparation before you go into the kitchen. A 15-minute of arranging and measuring all those ingredients gives you a perfect start to the meal. Since you have everything on the table now, you easily focus on the cooking part only. The process is named Mise En Place in French. You may feel this is unnecessary at first but soon you will understand how much easier it makes cooking. 

For example- In the cooking process of Risotto, you need to have salt & pepper, Arborio rice, white wine, grated parmesan, butter, and onions set on a tray. The process does not give you time for preparing all this while you put the stove on. Hence you must prepare all these before you put the pot on the stove. 

Don’t wait for the Last Minute Preparation:

Mise En Place tells you to prepare food ingredients before you are on the stove. Let’s take it a little deeper than Mise En Place. For making food delicious and better visually appealing, you can prepare those hours if not days before the actual cooking time. 

For example, to cook a slice of intense-tasting meat, you need to soak it in salt-water brine for at least one hour. Other ways to get it are soaking it in lemon juice or marinade from any store. For storing hard veggies like carrots, boil them in water and then give them an ice bath. After that keep them in a bowl and put them in the fridge for after use. This saves your time and also helps you to get a perfect taste due to less stressful work.

Fabricating Poultry:

Chicken is the best ingredient for your kitchen. People love cooking chicken. However, people miss many things by not butchering the kitchen themselves. This will save you money as well as make sure that you get the full benefits of a chicken. You can get all the leftover parts to cook something delicious afterward. 

The teachers will train you to cut the chicken into a total of eight parts. Two wings, two legs, two thighs, and two breasts. The backbone will be used for making a base for flavour soups. 

The fabrication of the chicken needs the practice of knife skills. It is a work of clean and fine-cutting skills. 

Wonders of the Pan Sauce:

You can give an extra jolt of flavour to all your pan-fries by serving them with an instant pan sauce. The sauce will enhance the taste of the meat and will give your customers a mouth blast of flavour. 

You can instantly cook a pan sauce when you are done frying the meat or chicken. Follow the below instructions. 

– Add some butter to the pan first. 

– Sauté some onions or shallots. 

– Scrap all the leftovers with the help of a spoon. 

– Add some water or wine or alcohol like brandy or whiskey. Red wine for hearty dark sauce and white for lighter sauce for chicken, pork, or fish. 

– You can make the sauce thick by adding some flour or cream to it. 

– After the mixture gets reduced by half, add salt & pepper and herbs. 

– Now your pan sauce is ready to be served. 

Slick Knife Skills:

A chef’s most important tool is his/ her knife set. Just like a drumstick is to a drummer, a knife is to a chef. That’s why the very first thing you will learn in culinary school in Delhi is handling a knife. 

You will understand the secret of fine knife skills from the basics of it. Such as how to hold a knife? Where to grip it rightly? And how to use your guide hand? You will learn the rolling skills to chop your veggies and herbs. 

The second thing is maintaining your knife sets. You will learn to select the right knife for each work. How to sharpen them and how clean your knives? You will also get familiar with the honing process that is for keeping your sharp edges at the centre. Also, you will learn to sharpen the knife which is essential once a year. 

The Cleaning Process as You Go:

The one habit you will develop in culinary school is keeping the whole stage clean while performing the art. Usually, the trainer suggests you keep a bowl alongside the slab to put all the scraps and wastes in that bowl only. Keeping a towel soaked in sanitizer is a perfect tool to clean up the whole mess. Using a compartment sink is also a great idea while scraping, and washing the pots and pans as soon as they get cooled. 

Old & new Cooking Methods:

This is an important lesson to students that all the slow procedures that our elders used to follow are perfect for cooking meat or chicken far tastier. You will learn the slow processes like braising or sous vide to fry the meat. No process can compete with the taste of a folk-tender textured meat from slow cooking in the oven in a covered pot. 

Sous Vide is a process in which you use vacuum-sealed bags to slowly cook the meat in a heat-controlled water bath and browned it on a grill or hot pan. 

Read More: HISTORY OF CULINARY ARTS

Conclusion:

In the culinary courses in Delhi, you will learn many new things other than what we have mentioned above. All these are some of those secret techniques that make a chef special. Aren’t you excited? As you are going to take admitted to this course, I hope you learn all those and thank us for giving you a glimpse of a few things before you even start your journey.