If you have reached this page, it is because you probably still have a couple of excuses to finish making the decision about whether you want to study to become a professional chef.
Questions such as: What does it really mean to be a professional chef? What does it take to be a chef, or what requirements are there to be a chef? What should I study, or where to study the profession of chef? Why should I be a chef? Is being a chef really difficult?
The chef career is no longer as it was many years ago. Kitchens have evolved, transforming and adapting to the globalized and digitized world in which we now live. A chef no longer only needs to know basic recipes or techniques, now a chef needs skills that allow him to adapt to the new paradigms of gastronomy, and to the new business models of restoration.
Throughout this guide we will reveal the secrets and tips you need to know to become a successful chef. Studying cooking requires new teaching methodologies that allow your learning to acquire value in the kitchens of the 21st century.
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The word chef or cook has many associated connotations, and like all professions, its definition adapts and changes according to the context. During an interview with Ferran Adrià, they asked him if he was a cook, to which he replied:
“We could say that I used to use the kitchen to create dishes and now I use it to understand and experiment on the creation and innovation systems. I am a cook trying to create. The attitude of people who want to create and take risks to open paths is different. " - Ferran Adrià
In the past, gastronomy was not recognized worldwide as it is now. The kitchen was something from home, another necessity of the day to day of the human being. Now, being a chef goes beyond selecting the best ingredients, creating new culinary presentations and pleasing an audience with a composition of surprising smells, colors and flavors.
Being a professional chef today requires having the knowledge and skills necessary to master the most basic techniques to the most current cooking techniques. This involves knowing how new technologies work, which allow the chef to transform products, starting from knowing the physics and chemistry that make them up.
Being a chef means being a chemist, an artist, a communicator, a financier, a creative, and a juggler. It is no longer enough to create complete dishes. A chef must also know how to sell the story behind what he cooks, how much it costs him and what he needs to make a profit; You must know how to manage those who will carry out your creations, and know how to adapt to trends and changes that you still do not know about in the future.
What is clear to us is that the definition and meaning of being a chef will be directly related, with everything that the chef needs to know, know and master to function in today's kitchens. We'll tell you then…
Acquiring the vision of the future of gastronomy and the world of restoration and assuming the skills required to be a chef in the 21st century is part of being a Meta Chef.
On the one hand, the Meta Chef must be able to master the kitchen, its techniques, methodologies, and functionalities to be able to design, propose and execute high-level culinary projects and, simultaneously, be trained in financial, logistical, and management. If to these elements you add the empowerment of attitudes and the acquisition of methodologies for the development of creativity and innovation in the kitchen; then you can consider yourself a complete chef.
A Meta chef has such a wide range of knowledge that he/she can practice in any kitchen or restaurant business in the world, knowing how to adapt not only to cultures, but also to different scenarios at the level of product, technology, and contexts, taking precedence over the challenges of the future.
For this reason, those who want to study to be a chef of the 21st century should not limit themselves to acquiring knowledge, but rather to focus their development on the skills necessary to face the paradigm changes that this century holds and promoting certain attitudes that become a true agent of social change.
The possibilities that a chef can have with this preparation will be further boosted if, when studying for this profession, he/she trains with real challenges, he/she becomes capable of creating and developing his own projects or for others; and gets international experiences that enriches his/her background.
Therefore, the tools available to the Meta Chef could be summarized as follows:
In an interview made to a Joan Roca by the famous newspaper La Vanguardia, the famous chef comments that twenty years ago he would not have imagined that today there would be so much young talent in his kitchens. Those who lead the world's largest, most authentic and innovative kitchens are no longer satisfied with a cook with basic knowledge and ancient practices.
The trends of gastronomy brings new challenges for those who want to study cooking. In addition to meeting the requirements mentioned in the previous section, cooks must now have additional skills that allow them to distinguish themselves.
Be creative and seek innovation: All chefs must exercise skills related to creativity and innovation to develop lateral thinking. This allows you to have creative processes that make it easy for you to create and renew your most abstract culinary ideas.
Communicate efficiently: Imagine that you want to start your own business and are looking for investors or partners. Oral, written and conceptual expression will be precise to convince them of your ideas. In the same way, it will work for you with the team you want to lead.
Manage high performance teams: To manage teams you have to know each of its members, their behaviors, skills, and roles. It is important to have methodologies for all these elements to work effectively.
Have the ability to make decisions: There are methodologies for correct decision-making, and having this ability makes any professional much more capable of reasoning and avoiding mistakes.
Few professional chefs master these skills, but those who really know them and put them into practice undoubtedly have a competitive advantage over the rest. At the Culinary Institute of Barcelona, for example, the Haute Cuisine Chef Diploma Program, exists to train the future leaders of the kitchens of the 21st century, taking into account the challenges they will face. Tomás, one of his former students, tells you about his experience taking this program:
Today there are many options to train as a chef. New technologies have even increased the number of self-taught cooks, increasing the reasons and motives for obtaining professional training.
After winning best restaurant in "The world 50 Best Restaurant", Massimo Bottura revealed in an interview that his project of converting an old agricultural estate into a gastronomy university is due to the fact that he is concerned about young people who love this profession, since he believes that they should have more knowledge, culture and responsibility.
To be a chef you need to study a cooking course that helps you:
Knowing the product from different disciplines: It is not a matter of simply analyzing an ingredient or food, but of understanding how it has come to us and how it is related to the environment in which we live.
Have scientific foundations: through physics, chemistry and biology, the chef must understand what and why happens in each of the culinary processes.
Understand and apply current kitchen technologies: it is necessary to be a chef, have knowledge and command of all culinary techniques to use them as appropriate to the context or the product.
Specialize: each chef decides in which area of the kitchen he wants to be a specialist. It does not matter if it is healthy cooking, pastry, chocolate, fire and low temperature or molecular cuisine. The important thing is that you stand out, and it is recommended for this, to differentiate yourself in an area in which you are good and that at the same time you are passionate.
Having a cultural framework: all part of the origin, and understanding the motivations and cultural contexts that move gastronomy, provides a range of concepts and ideas that can inspire the chef to innovate.
Have a vision of the future: No chef is successful if he does not have his eyes set on the future. It is necessary to know the trends to try to get ahead of them and to be unique.
Choosing a school to study cooking to become a professional chef becomes a fundamental choice in the future of any aspiring to this career. Taking into account the factors that we have shared with you in the previous sections, you will be aware of the importance of differentiating yourself in the world of gastronomy.
Being different, unique, and daring to do things like no one has done before comes from the security with which you are able to function in the kitchen. And this security will come from the knowledge, skills and opportunities that are presented to you.
For this reason, we help you with a couple of elements that you should take into account before choosing where to study, guaranteeing that the cooking course you choose will provide you with those knowledge and skills that help you take advantage of the opportunities that are given to you in the road.
👉🏽 See the list of the best culinary schools in the world
If you have already convinced yourself to study to become a professional chef, you will surely want to know what your future will look like once you have finished your studies. The advantage of this race is that you can develop in different scenarios.
Here we tell you a little about each of these so that you can decide which one suits you best:
From north to south, Spain is full of extraordinary places for lovers of gastronomy. Each of its communities represents a totally different cultural and culinary value, but what is clear is that Spain brings together many of the great chefs who stand out worldwide. Studying cooking in a destination like Spain becomes an advantage for those who want to be a chef, and we tell you why: