Career Opportunity for Chefs

In the recent survey conducted by Salary.com about the perceived glamorous jobs; being a Head Chef ranked 9th on careers that most people envy. A chef is an individual who cooks professionally or in a restaurant scenario, she/he gives supervisions for everyone in the kitchen. Being a chef was highlighted by the popularity of the cooking shows such as Iron Chef America, Hell’s Kitchen and Top Chef. And it is the most lucrative career in the world, in a way we all need good food in our daily life, people enjoy eating at different restaurants with a lot of delicious food to choose.

There are several titles for a chef based on his particular duty.

• An Executive or Head Chef is in charge of everything related to the kitchen from creating the menu to managing the personnel and the business itself.
• A Chef de Cuisine or Sous Chef (pronounced as soo-shef) assists the Executive Chef particularly on planning the menu, costing and ordering of ingredients.
• An Expeditor acts as a liaison between the customers and the cooks. Their main responsibility is to make sure that the food will be served by the wait staff in time.
• Meanwhile, a Chef de Partie also called Station Chef is responsible for the kitchen’s production area. Station Chef also have hierarchies which includes

1. Sauce chef or saucier prepares sauces, stews and sautees food to order. This is also the highest position of all the stations.
2. Fish cook or poissonier prepares fish dishes.
3. Vegetable cook or entremetier fix vegetables, soups, starches and eggs. This can be further divided into vegetable cook, fry cook and soup cook.
4. Roast cook or rotissuer prepares roasted and braised meats and the corresponding gravy.
5. Pantry Chef or Garde Manger takes care of the cold foods like salads, dressings and other buffet items.
6. Pastry Chef or patissier is in charge of the sweets like pastries and desserts.
7. Relief cook, swing cook or tournant are substitutes for other station heads.

Due to the explosion of cooking shows on the boob tube and other media, here are other terms associated with Chefs.

• A Celebrity Chef is a person who become famous because of his cooking but it is also tagged as a negative thing for a chef who has “sold out�? or gone mainstream to the media. Many consider Antoine Careme as the first celebrity chef and other popular chefs includes Rachel Ray and Jeff “The Frugal Chef�? Smith.
• The Iron Chefs are:
  

1. Mario Batali who specializes in Italian cuisine
2. Cat Cora, the first female Iron Chef and a Greek and Aegean cuisine specialist.
3. Bobby Flay was a former Iron Chef challenger and now a Southwestern Cuisine specialist.
4. Masaharu Morimoto specializes in neo-Japanese cuisine.
   

A Personal Chef goes to a client’s home to prepare meals for the client based on their needs and wants. His duties includes making the menu and budget, purchasing the ingredients, preparing the meal, and cleaning up after the preparation.

We all love to eat that’s why there’s a lot of chef that booms everywhere. With their exquisite dishes and mouth-watering cuisines, who wouldn’t want to eat. There’s a lot of school that specialized in culinary arts, so if you want to be a Chef someday and make a lot of money with your career, start practicing with your special skills now.