I want to go to cooking school to learn to cook, but I don't want to make it my career. What should I do?!
Answers:
You can always take a night class or adult education. Like a university extention course. Or, buy a good cookbook and watch a lot of the food channel. Once you learn the basics, practice goes a long way in making you a cook. Also consider a part time job in a store or restaurant doing food prep and being a helper. They can pay you to learn.
Online Cooking Classes are a great alternative to cooking school. It's A LOT less expensive, you can take the classes at your own time, in your home, and can re-watch any particular lesson. In cooking school, once the class is over, it's over.
When choosing online cooking classes, be sure there is a distinct purpose. Many online classes just open a huge library of recipes to you and you're supposed to teach yourself.
Look for a course with a specific purpose, a goal, a theme, a mission, that has a beginning, middle, and graduation. A course where one skill builds upon the next is best.
If you really want to learn HOW to cook, watching a video on Creme Brulee one day and Prime Rib the next won't help you retain the information. This is like buying another cookbook.
Look for personality in the classes. Many are nameless, faceless close-ups of a stove. You'll get tired of this quickly. Follow someone you like and admire.
Concentrate on the basic cooking methods of saute, steaming, braising, roasting, grilling, poaching, simmering and you can most certainly learn to cook without reading.
Actually, you'll be a better cook for not following badly written recipes, you'll be creating new recipes for others to follow.
Chef Todd Mohr
WebCookingClasses.com
http://www.WebCookingClasses.com
You can take classes that are community ed to learn to cook. You can look at them in the internet. A lot of places have cooking classes no need to spend thousands of dollars in tuition to learn to cook. You can check out cookbooks at the library and follow those recipes, spend the money on food.
do what I did. take classes at local schools like community college. here in NYc we have many but when I moved to NJ for a few years I took a classic Italian and Thai cooking class at a local school. no credits earned but it was for personal development.
hire on as a cook for a local restaurant and get training an paid at the same time. If you have some experience to back you, for school, that helps.
Are you in school now? What do you want to do for your career? Concentrate on that first. Then work on cooking.
some school offer a class or two so you might call your local high school to see if they have any night class