My first couple weeks of culinary school are wrapping up, and I figured it would be a good time to start trying to get my thoughts out there. It still feels surreal to me that I actually am in school for cooking, and I’m trying to savor every minute.
Of course culinary school starts with knife skills. It’s annoying and pretentious, but the reasoning completely makes sense. Uniform cuts allow for more even cook times and frankly, a more pleasant dining experience when chewing. No one wants to take a mouthful of soup and bite into a raw carrot because the mire poix wasn’t uniform in size.
The smallest we get tested on is 1/4 of an inch, a small dice. We also have to mince garlic, but that is simpler than a fine julienne (1/16 of an inch) because it doesn’t have to be precisely measured. We practice cutting things of various sizes in class, and we are told to go home and keep practicing until those measurements become second nature. My biggest challenge so far is not turning my dice into trapezoids. For some reason, I put more pressure on the knife as I lean into the cut, so my sides are angled instead of flat rectangles. It’s something I’m working on, I’m sure i’ll break the habit with all the practice I’m getting, especially with how many tips and hints I’m getting from our instructor and even the other students who already have spent time in restaurants.
It’s absolutely incredible to be surrounded by people who also love food as much as I do. For the past few months, all I do is talk about food. I had this arugula ice cream at Frevo when I did a tasting there, and genuinely told everyone I knew about it. The science of how they got this dessert to distinctly taste like arugula without any of the bitterness blew my mind. Science is an integral part of cooking, and I love being able to nerd out about these little things with the rest of my class. We went down a rabbit hole in class the other day about how salt impacts freezing points, which is why you can add water to an ice bath to get the temperature a little colder.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of what we’re going to be learning this year and I already can’t shut up about it. I’m so excited for this next year. I’m planning to update here every couple of weeks when I have new things to say about what I’m learning. I only get to do a crash course like this once in a lifetime, and I’m hoping to document as much of it as I can.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more.
Second Bite 