Tom Colicchio taught himself to cook by studying the cooking manuals of Jacques Pepin. Mario Batali worked as a dishwasher at a New Jersey
pizza parlor. Emeril Lagasse learned the art of pastry at a local Portuguese bakery.Everyone has to start somewhere.If you’re thinking about starting a culinary career, but aren’t quite sure how to make it to the ranks of Top Chef, look no further. We’ve broken down the culinary ladder into three basic rungs that, with the right training, you’ll be able to climb. Check it out:

Step #1: Enroll in Culinary School
It takes a lot to be a chef. Chefs have to know how to sear a piece of tuna, sauté fresh asparagus, and reduce a sauce down to perfection-sometimes all at once. In addition, they must know how to oversee an entire kitchen staff, handle knives without losing any fingers, and keep the refrigerator at the right temperature so the meat doesn’t spoil and the desserts don’t freeze.

To learn all of this (and a few other tricks that come in handy), most chefs start their career by going to culinary school. There, you’ll get the hands-on experience you need to make your way around the kitchen.

Step #2: Get Some Experience Under Your Belt
Despite what the reality shows say, no one graduates from culinary school and becomes the next Gordon Ramsay. First, you have to prove that you can hold your own in front of a char grill on a busy Friday night.

When you graduate culinary school, use the connections you made their to find a position as a chef de partie, also known as a station chef or line cook. Yes, it will be grueling and consist of long hours, but it’s a great way to get the experience you need. Many restaurants rotate their line employees through different stations, which allow you to perfect your skills and handle any complicated order that comes your way.

Step #3: Work Your Way Up
Once you feel confident in your culinary skills, what’s next? There’s a variety of positions underneath the executive chef that will allow you to climb the culinary ladder.

Expediters work to coordinate all the different entrees and ensure that they come out on time. (They’re sort of like an orchestra conductor, but of the kitchen.) Head cooks oversee and supervise the other workers on the line. And Sous chefs are second-in-command to the executive chef, ordering inventory, helping with menu creation, and running the kitchen in the chef’s absence.

Any of these positions will give you the leadership and management experience you need to eventually become an executive chef yourself.

Ready to get started?
Find out more about culinary schools and programs on this culinary degree programs page.

How to Adapt a Recipe

If you are capable of following a recipe, you are capable of creating your own. The best way to start off is by tinkering with an easy recipe that you know you like.

You might have a favorite meat or fish dish. How would that dish taste if you added some Thai spices or served it with pasta and sauce instead of with the baked potatoes or rice you normally use?

You can combine your favorite parts of different recipes to make one new one. For example, if you have a favorite recipe for grilled chicken and a winning white wine sauce recipe, you can use a recipe search to find the perfect vegetable side dish to complete this meal. Of course, a recipe search engine is not capable of creating brand new recipes itself but you can adapt recipes you find and make them your own.

Tips for Creating Recipes

Do not expect every creation to be amazing. It can happen that you use a flavor in a recipe and find that it just does not work out. If that should happen, just chalk it up to experience and try a new approach the next time.

Rather than create a new spice blend and rub it over a whole chicken, why not make a new spicy sauce and cook the chicken separately. That way, if the spice blend comes out wrong, you have not ruined an entire chicken.

The only things required for inventing recipes yourself is a creative streak and a bit of bravery. You do not need to be a gourmet chef or have extensive food knowledge.

Start simply, rather than attempting to create an elaborate meal from scratch. This might mean you change the kind of cheese in a recipe and a few of the vegetables. It might mean you use Chinese spices in a fish dish instead of the Italian spices in the recipe.

Perhaps you have tried this already. Perhaps you have been partway through a recipe before and suddenly realized you do not have one of the ingredients. Maybe you substituted the ingredient with something you did have. This is a kind of recipe creation because your meal was original and different from the recipe.

Using a recipe search engine is the best way to get started because you can explore different kinds of recipes and do a recipe search by ingredient if you have an idea of what you want to use.

With so many convenience foods and quick ready-meals on the market today, there are many areas where it’s simply unheard of to pick edible dandelions or nettle plants even though there’s no cost to doing this. One of the benefits of picking and eating your own types of wild food and edible plants is that they are much healthier in the way of nutrients than their shop bought counterparts. For example, one type of wild food that is certainly edible is called “Fat Hen” and this is a green plant that is comparable to spinach or cabbage. However, Fat Hen contains more protein, Vitamin B, iron, and calcium! Another example is wild garlic that is healthier than cultivated garlic because of the chlorophyll that it contains, not to mention that it makes a great addition to salads and other flavouring!

Yet another benefit to choosing the wild food route and staying away from shop bought produce for the most part is that the wild plants, natural fruits, and vegetables that can be grown from your own back yard or that can be picked in fields don’t contain chemicals, pesticides, or herbicides. Anything that is added to plants or food in a farmers’ field in order to make it grow larger or quicker or added so that the crops will stay fresh longer is usually unnatural and has very little nutritional value, if any.

When it comes to choosing the food that we eat, many times, the supermarket is our first stop. However, eating wild food and picking it naturally from the earth gives us intangible benefits: responsibility and respect. After you have experienced going out to find wild food plants for your meals or tending to the fresh fruits and vegetables in your own backyard then you’ll naturally develop a newfound sense of responsibility for yourself as well as for your body to keep it healthy. In addition, many people say that they also gain more respect for the earth and plants that have been here for thousands of years when they begin to take on a new lifestyle of choosing wild food and plants over chemical treated, shop bought foodstuffs.

What makes deep fried peanuts a gourmet snack food? I am sure many people would say they do not cost enough, or what can be gourmet
about a peanut. George Washington Carver developed many uses for the peanut that we never think about. It is a cool nut that is not a nut, it is a legume. A legume is a plant that encloses its seeds in a pod, so peanuts are like a bean that grows underground. It also is the crop of choice for one of our former presidents Jimmy Carter. If that does not make it gourmet I don’t know what would. Because there are so many different food items made from peanuts, it can be used so many different ways, and it is the chosen crop of a former president deep fried peanuts have to be a gourmet snack food.

So what are the food items that we use from peanuts? There are so many this can not be an exhaustive list but will cover many of the main categories. We all know about peanut butter, and what a great choice to mix with jelly on a sandwich. It is also used in many Asian dishes as a thickener in soups and stews. Many times Chinese, dishes have peanuts sprinkled on top to give the dish some crunch. Of course you can eat them raw, or roasted with salt or honey glazed on the nuts. Here in the south, we have a couple of unusual traditions with peanuts. The first is boiled peanuts. You can be driving down the road and many road side produce stands will have signs advertising boiled peanuts. Some of you may ask, what is a boiled peanut? Raw peanuts with the shell are dumped into a pot of boiling water which can have different flavors like salted, garlic, or Cajun. Then the peanuts are removed. The shell is cracked and the juice is sucked out and the peanuts eaten. The most unusual is deep fried peanuts. In the south, you have to deep fry everything. So with the shells on, you drop the peanuts into hot grease and fry. Then as they come out of the oil sprinkle your favorite flavors on the shell. Then eat the peanuts shell and all. Good stuff.

What else can we use the peanut for besides eating? One application is the making of peanut oil. Everyone who loves deep frying knows that the longest lasting and safest oil to fry in is peanut oil. Most restaurants use peanut oil because it lasts so much longer than vegetable oil in their deep fryers. The second reason is peanut oil has a lot higher ignition temperature than other oils. So when making funnel cakes or deep fried turkeys, your risk of fire is reduced greatly. Peanuts can also be used to make cosmetics, fuel for biomass stoves, dyes, paints, stains, paper glue, gas and hundreds of other things according to the Tuskegee University web site. The last group and probably the most used but least thought about are medicines. Peanuts and peanut products can be used for rubbing oils, castor oil substitutes, laxatives, and even for venereal disease. That George Washington Carver was an amazing inventor. He came up with all of these uses and did and only sold three of them, the rest he gave to mankind.

The last reason deep fried peanuts can be a gourmet food snack is a former president grew up on a peanut farm. Every body knew the peanut farmer from Georgia in 1976. The campaign was as much about rural people and peanuts as it was about the candidates. Now, Plains Georgia has an annual celebration of the peanut and the former president. There are images of the peanut all over the town, a 5K race, beauty queens, and several other competitions during the festival. There are also several museums commemorating Mr. Carter and the influence the peanut and farming had on his life. If a president had a significant experience with a peanut, then I think you should also. Go find some deep fried peanuts, boiled peanuts, or some honey roasted. I am sure you will be glad you did

In spring and early summer each year baby birds are struggling for survival. Inevitably the odd young bird tries to fledge too soon or falls out of the nest before it should and is found by a person like you or me. How to feed young wild birds and ensure their survival through to adulthood then becomes key and is a challenge not to be taken lightly. Even with the best information and intentions, before feeding young birds you should be aware that there is still a good chance they won’t survive. Injuries from their fall, stress or just plain bad luck can all have an effect on a young bird. In addition, it may have fallen out of the nest not through bad luck but because it is weak or diseased and may not make it anyway.

Sometimes, as cold hearted as it sounds, you are best to leave the bird exactly where you find it. In many cases the bird may have fallen accidentally and may look in danger but it is quite likely one of thr adult parent birds is watching from a nearby bush or tree. As soon as you touch the baby bird it will be disowned by it’s parents and no more maternal care by it’s parents will be offered so if you do pick up a baby bird for whatever reason, you will have to care for it from then on. On the flip side, if you leave the baby bird alone the parent may well come down and feed the bird or help it back up to a safe roost. Fallen baby birds are, after all, quite common and wild birds have evolved and developed solutions over the years.

The bird should be kept in a surrogate nest – such as a shoe box – with paper towel around the edges and along the bottom of the box to absorb any mess and to make the baby bird feel comfortable. Any mess should be renoved immediately and cleanliness is vitally important to your success as a surrogate parent. Try to do your best not to upset the bird – keep it warm and in semi-darkness unless you are trying to feed the bird and keep noise and commotion to an absolute minimum around the box.

The easiest utensil to use for feeding birds is a teaspoon, which you have modified by deliberately bending up the sudes using a vice and/or pliers to create a sort of “shute” or tube down which food can be poured. Foods to try for young birds, depending on the species, are bread crumbs, cooked egg yolk, finely-ground cooked meat or one of the professional rearing foods available from larger pet stores. All foods should be moist and easy to swallow and baby birds should be fed regularly – every 30 minutes or so inititally extending to once every 30 – 60 minutes as the bird grows.

Gourmet is often used as a distinguishing word for foods of that with high quality, where special efforts and artistic flare are used by the preparers or makers in the arrangement or cooking of any sumptuous meal. The word has a connotation for elitism in eating preferences and is repeatedly used to describe people of refined taste and obsession for food. The word gourmet is from the French term for a wine broker employed by a wine trader who has a trustworthy name for being an aficionado of delicious things that were not eaten mainly for nourishment.

You can get all kinds of gourmet food guides no matter where you want to travel. There are several different places that offer gourmet food guides for their state or even the diverse larger cities. With these food guides, you can enjoy the best gourmet foods in every place, state or country you wish to visit. With a gourmet food guide in your hand, you will be able to find the most delectable foods such as seafood, chocolate, cheese, wines, and other traditional dishes of each locality. You can even enjoy various walking tours that mark a variety of restaurants that recommend gourmet food. All of these gourmet food guides should help your taste buds enjoy the vacation as much as you.

It is now possible to purchase gourmet food online, particularly when you are short on time. Leading the kind of busy lives most of us do, often we just do not have sufficient time for researching recipes and shopping for groceries in supermarkets, let alone spending hours in the kitchen cooking! Sometimes buying in just one or two prepared gourmet meal and preparing everything else yourself is just sufficient to take the stress off you. The web is perhaps the simplest and most time efficient method for looking the perfect supplier of gourmet food online that gets delivered right to your doorstep.

You may speculate if gourmet food on the web is going to be costly proposition. Considering the true cost of preparing your very own food that is obviously going to be on the higher side, online reports may not be preposterously pricey as you may envision. Most times every one of those extra ingredients, plus what you utilize from your own store cabinet soon mount up. And if you happen to create a mistake with a complex recipe it can be very pricey to have to start again. So by putting an importance on your time you must learn how to find a contractor close by in your locale that can provide gourmet food.

Home chef cooking tools allow home cooked meals to be served throughout the day in one convenient location. Home chef cooking tools will also allow meals to be served in an elegant manner. Home chefs can create creamy soups and they seem to taste better when they are ladled into bowls. Lasagna will be easier to serve with large serving spoons that are capable of slicing portions out of the pan and not scooping the portions into an unsightly clump on the plate. Cooking tools give cooks more control while serving hot foods and guests seem to enjoy meals more because they are on the table.

A home chef can orchestrate a marvelous meal when using cooking tools designed for outdoor living lifestyles. Family barbecues will go off without a hitch when the cook is using tools that allow them to grasp large cuts of meat and flip them in an instant. Home chefs that enjoy outdoor cooking will keep other home chef cooking tools indoors. Partitioned plates can be used to re-warm foods that were cooked on the grill earlier in the day.

Covered dishes can be home chef cooking tools that are perfect for busy lives. People can save money by carrying lunches to work in these sealed containers and home chefs do not have to bear great expenses by keeping the house stocked with disposable containers. Storage containers are one kitchen tool that home chefs rely on immensely. These tools allow foods to be prepared ahead of schedule, and frozen quickly for use on a later date. Some meal menu items can be stored in the refrigerator to provide fast snacks when children come home from school in the afternoon.

The home chef cooking tools can make entertaining at home a fun experience. Home chefs can maintain a myriad of wine glasses and other useful glass choices that are prefect for drinking champagne. Tabletop drink dispensers could turn any event into a more celebrated gathering when chocolate sauces are used as one of the cooking tools for the evening of festivities. Home chef cooking tools will allow guests to serve foods from covered containers and make clean up after an event an easy task to accomplish.

A home chef can make any corner of the home a great place for guests to mix and mingle if the right kitchen furniture is in place. Some guests prefer to sit in barstools while conversing with family and friends and others prefer to use the standard kitchen table chairs as the place where they will exchange information with friends. Some home chef cooking tools will keep children occupied for some time because kids enjoy making custom-built sandwiches that are filled with the ingredients on hand at a party and they choose to use tools such as tabletop grills to heat them.

Marinades are just a simple way to prepare certain foods that you want to have an extra kick to. Marinades to meats, serve two different purposes to tenderize and to give more flavor. Less fatty foods have a blander taste than most steaks and such. Marinades are just an easy way to tenderize and add a lot more flavor.

To make a marinade you need something of acidic base with herbs and vinegar to make the meats tasty. A marinade with a little bit of chili powder, garlic and oregano with give the food you are a making sort of a Mexican taste. Maybe for an Asian marinade some ginger and sesame seeds with a little soy sauce and hot sauce. A lot of sodas give great taste as well such as sprite goes good with chicken and coca cola is another.

The different foods you may be making are different from each other so you might need a couple of different sauces. Marinades with an acidic base give both flavor and tenderization. These marinades with acidic bases tenderize by unraveling the protein strands in the meats and fish in which you are marinating. When you are using an acidic base marinade never use aluminum or such because it will cause discoloration in the food and might cause it to have a bad taste so just use glass or other plates rather than aluminum.

The other type of marinade is dry marinade. These types are usually made of dry spices and can be rubbed right into the meats which you are trying to add flavor to. This will enhance the flavor but will not do to good as a tenderizer.

Yes, most marinades have a secret ingredient which the chefs refuse to reveal. And marinades without the secret ingredient simply taste bland. Now, when there are hundreds of marinade companies out there, why would you want to try making your own marinade?

Simply log on to any search engine and look for marinades. You will come across hundreds of websites selling these marinades. Wine Country Chef is a good website you should consider when buying marinades online. It is a place where a sense of time and place is skillfully blended with fresh and flavorful ingredients to capture the essence of the wine country. Gourmet marinade with fresh local ingredients and a flavor that captures the essence of the wine country to be enjoyed with chicken and beef.

Wine Country Chef’s mission is simple: to provide the best products and service to customers. Wine Country Chef takes great pride in what it do, the commitment to customer service and in the products it sells. The online store is designed to provide you with a safe and secure environment to browse the product catalog.

The longer you leave food and meats to marinade the more flavor and tender your food is going to be. If you have steaks it is good to either buy a 30 minute marinade or get a better marinade and let it sit and soak in the marinade all night until the next day.

Leftover marinades are useful for sauces but they need to be cooked to a heat that will kill any bacteria that grew over night. These sauces are good to add to fish steak and other foods. Just be sure to kill all the bacteria before you use the leftover marinades.

Before you start looking around, evaluate what it is that you want. Is there a particular type of restaurant you want to own? Are you leaning towards a chain operation where everyone is familiar with what they will get? Are you interested in something that is uniquely yours to fit a need? Some people want to buy a restaurant that is small and casual. Others are looking for something large and upscale.

How much money can you reasonably invest in that business. This is one of the biggest issues with how to buy a restaurant that you want to pay attention to. Don’t set yourself up for something much bigger than you can take on. If you are just out there looking at every price range what you fall in love with may be out of your price reach. At that point you either will be disappointed or you will do anything you can to get your hands on money you may not be able to repay.

The location of a restaurant is important as well. Are you willing to relocate from where you are now to get a great business opportunity? Not everyone is ready to just pack up and start all over again in new territory. If you are looking for something local your options may be limited. Regardless, you also need to evaluate the location in regards to the amount of traffic in the area that can easily access it.

Part of how to buy a restaurant is keeping your options open. You can work with a local real estate agent for guidance. You can also go online and easily find plenty of great restaurants for sale. Since you already have taken a close look at what you want you can narrow down what is offered. Once you find something of interest schedule an appointment to take a close look at it.

This process involves having every inch of the restaurant inspected. You don’t want any costly repairs to crop up down the road due to not taking a close enough look. You also want to look at the financial statements for the business over the past few years. Anyone that really wants to sell their restaurant is going to be willing to provide such information.

Before you sign any paperwork, make sure you carefully cover everything. You definitely want to make sure buying that particular restaurant is right for you. If you see any red flags then bow out gracefully and keep on looking. When you know how to buy a restaurant the right way it will save you lots of headaches and additional expenses later on.

Chocolate cake is a common dessert cake served at many gatherings such as birthday parties and weddings. There are many different types of chocolate cake depending on the alteration of the ingredients and chocolate flavoring.

For chocolate cake connoisseurs the preferences are as unique as the people themselves – chocolate cake frosted with vanilla icing, chocolate icing, whip cream, you name it. Each family may have a special recipe handed down from generation to generation or a favorite bakery where the chocolate cake can’t be missed. Today’s ever-increasing popularity of chocolate cake would surely have been a surprise to those who first attempted its creation.

The making of cakes in a general nature began shortly after flour was discovered. The recipe then was much less sweet than it is today – displaying more of a bread-like quality. Initially, added to the flour, were milk and yeast; honey or dried fruit were added to sweeten the mixture. Today, eggs are most often used in place of yeast, and, of course, sugar has become our sweetener of choice. Making cake prior to the Industrial Revolution was a complicated and pricey process. But with the advent of mass produced ingredients, cake making became affordable and easy for all levels of bakers.

Chocolate cake was first seen in the United States, the recipe for which was submitted to a Dallas, Texas newspaper in 1957. This particular recipe called for Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate which is how the chocolate cake received its name. The response to the printed recipe was immediate and astounding.

Today, the variations to this original recipe number into the thousands, with families adding their own special additions throughout the years. The advent of the boxed chocolate cake has given hope to elementary bakers everywhere whose only responsibility is to add egg and oil and bake.

It is indeed hard to resist the sweet smell of chocolate cake, especially when the aroma is linked with nice memories.