Question 4

What skills are needed to become a professional chef?

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There are three types of skills needed to become a professional chef.  The three skills needed are safety and sanitation, basic cooking, and specialty cooking skills. 
In most culinary schools, the first thing that a new student learns is how to maintain safety and good sanitation in a restaurant. The individual will not be a successful chef regardless of how good a cook he or she is. There are specific skills that are needed including knowing how to keep your equipment clean and how to properly store food so that it will not spoil. Learning how to rotate food is also essential in a kitchen. To prevent spoilage a good chef is mindful to use older products before newer ones. Safety is vital in a working kitchen and he or she must understand how to use larger restaurant-grade appliances, such as meat grinders and over-sized food processors.
Basic cooking skills must be mastered in order to become a quality chef. A good knowledge of very basic kitchen procedures is needed like how to properly hold a knife. The individual  will also need to know what pots and pans are used for specific foods and types of cooking.  In basic cooking methods such as boiling, sauteing and poaching is required. Knowing how to handle and prepare meats in a variety of settings, such as braising and grilling, is also the mark of a good cook.
Once the basic cooking skills and methods are mastered, a chef may choose to break into a specialty area. Which is a specific style of cooking, such as French or Italian, or a chef may select a specific subgroup to focus on, such as meats or baking. If the chef is baking he or she would need to be well versed in pastries, bread making, torts and cakes. Other skills for a baker are excellent cake decorating methods and how to work with sugar and mold chocolate (Roop).
According to Christopher Gross a chef must have the top 5 skills. The top 5 skills to him are

is develop an extremely well-tuned palette. The chef should get in the habit of tasting at every stage of the cooking process.A chef must also be an expert with kitchen tools, knowledgeable about products and absolutely strict about maintaining the highest level of hygiene. Also, a chef is something of a role model in the kitchen and must keep his or her surroundings professional.And last, a successful chef will have the imagination and courage to explore, experiment and introduce new culinary feats to the world with complete confidence (Gross).

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Works Cited

Roop, Lacey. "Skills Needed to become a Chef." eHow. eHow, n.d. Web. 20 May 2013. http://www.ehow.com/way_5498191_skills-needed-become-chef.html.

Gross, Christopher. "Chef dish: Top 5 kitchen skills." azCentral. N.p., 1 6 2010. Web. 20 May 2013. http://www.azcentral.com/style/hfe/food/articles/20100126chef-dish-top-five-chef-skills.html.