Freshman Culinary 101

By Polina Negrescu      Published January 30, 2020

The culinary program is part of the top eight magnet programs at Northwest Career &Technical Academy and has gained high numbers of student admissions in this past year. This program comes along with an astonishing amount of safety procedures and life skills within the classroom. The question coming from incoming freshman presents itself to be: what should the class of 2020 in the culinary program know before the upcoming school year? 

A current freshman in the culinary program, Brianna Jacobs, reached her second semester in the 8-semester curriculum at Northwest Academy. Jacobs mentioned that this program has impacted the daily lives of not only her but her classmates through coached information pertaining to certain cooking skills used at home and basic cuisine creation.  The culinary classrooms also differ from other classrooms not only appearance wise but through specific educational assignments that are unique to most average schools. 

These assignments and study methods were created directly for culinary students throughout the district specifically for this program. Other factors of the program include skills of note-taking and perfect memorization of the regulations of the kitchen due to risk-filled tasks, such as cutting with sharp objects and cooking dishes using fire-based furnishings. Jacobs also brought up the fact that incoming freshmen should be prepared to take large amounts of notes throughout class at the beginning of the year.

Although assistance throughout the preparation of dishes is provided by Chef Columbo, most instructions are copied directly off of notepads owned by the students. Another culinary freshman, Jaynie Jurado, stated: “it would be easier for the freshmen in the culinary program next year if they had some basic knowledge of cutting skills and measurements in order to benefit them later in the year”. Contributions of culinary skills taught in class provide culinary students with a greater and earlier onset of knowledge of preparation of dishes.