What does a sous chef do?!
As far as the grunt work the others have mentioned, we did do some prep, meat cutting, and if nessessary helped on the line with service in high volume periods, it is a multi-tasking position, but alot of fun, I got to travel and work in Canada, Jamaica, Singapore and Japan in my long career, met some nice people made some great friends, just wish they had e-mail back then.
Answers: Well all of the answers even the "nut"-shell one are creative, those who use the cut and paste way only capture the essence, I am a former chef and sous chef of over 20+ years in the hotel trade, and while as a sous chef I did correctly supervise the kitchen, you also have to make sure the cooks or chef de parties are set for service, control the service orders, make sure the other departments have all the foods ready and available for the kitchen, working with the Head/Executive chef on personel issues, scheduling, in a hotel you also work with the steward and food reciever to have the food products brought up or other of the main store room, as alot of things can be in a secure area.
As far as the grunt work the others have mentioned, we did do some prep, meat cutting, and if nessessary helped on the line with service in high volume periods, it is a multi-tasking position, but alot of fun, I got to travel and work in Canada, Jamaica, Singapore and Japan in my long career, met some nice people made some great friends, just wish they had e-mail back then.
They do the icky work...cut hand stuff to the master chef.. they basically are the helper.
The sous-chef de cuisine (Deputy-chef of the kitchen) is the direct assistant of the executive chef and is second in command. He may be responsible for scheduling, and filling in for the executive chef when he or she is off-duty. The Sous Chef will also fill in for or assist the chef de partie (line cooks) when needed. Smaller operations may not have a sous chef, while larger operations may have multiple.[2] The term "sous-chef" is pronounced like the rare spelling "su chef".
Sous chef is directly under the executive chef. What commonly happens is that the sous chef is in charge of the kitchen. He's there cooking with everybody during service, watches over the line and all the cooks. An executive chef a lot of times doesn't do much of this cooking. They actually spend more time behind a desk and more over seeing things, creating recipes, costing them, etc. This is especially true of bigger operations. The sous chef usually works their butt off. They are there ALL THE TIME.
The sous-chef de cuisine (Deputy-chef of the kitchen) is the direct assistant of the executive chef and is second in command. He may be responsible for scheduling, and filling in for the executive chef when he or she is off-duty. The Sous Chef will also fill in for or assist the chef de partie (line cooks) when needed. Smaller operations may not have a sous chef, while larger operations may have multiple
In a nutshell, a sous chef is a glorified kitchen supervisor.... in a large kitchen, and doesn't cook, he just over sees the kitchen personnel. Makes sure that the cooks get the food prepared on time and out on the buffet.
Of course, he/she can cook, that's understood. He wouldn't be overseeing the cooks, if he didn't know how to cook.
A lot of the answers are very technical. In laymens terms it just means to help. A sous chef does the chopping and any grunt work that needs to be done.